tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/socialism-1138/articlesSocialism – The Conversation2019-01-15T13:59:06Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1097832019-01-15T13:59:06Z2019-01-15T13:59:06ZRosa Luxemburg: revolutionary warned of environmental destruction and resurgent far right<blockquote>
<p>Your ‘order’ is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will ‘rise up again, clashing its weapons,’ and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!</p>
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<p>The final written words of Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg still resonate 100 years since her death. Murdered by right-wing paramilitaries on January 15, 1919, her fate in Berlin foreshadowed the brutality of the following two decades. The German Revolution she fought for was <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/victor-klemperer-german-revolution/">stamped out</a> in the chaotic aftermath of World War I. But did Luxemburg’s legacy die with it? </p>
<p>Luxemburg’s colossal influence on the left is still <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/red-rosa-luxemburg-and-the-making-of-a-revolutionary-icon/a-47006610">celebrated today in Germany and around the world</a>. Her conviction that democratic socialism could flourish was rooted in her meticulous analysis of how capitalism worked and she was convinced that brutality was <a href="https://www.rosalux.de/en/dossiers/rosa-luxemburg-and-the-german-revolution/">an inevitable feature of capitalism</a>. Through its need for new resources and territory, Luxemburg believed capitalism would end in collapse and misery. </p>
<p>As her final words suggest, she saw the uncertainty of her day as <a href="http://socialistreview.org.uk/332/rosa-luxemburg-life-struggle">an opportunity to create a fairer world</a>. With the rise of right-wing strongmen in Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro and the ongoing crisis of climate change, we should heed her words today.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253537/original/file-20190113-43520-45uncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253537/original/file-20190113-43520-45uncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=421&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253537/original/file-20190113-43520-45uncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=421&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253537/original/file-20190113-43520-45uncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=421&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253537/original/file-20190113-43520-45uncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=529&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253537/original/file-20190113-43520-45uncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=529&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253537/original/file-20190113-43520-45uncu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=529&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The paramilitary Freikorps quashed revolution in post-WWI Germany and were responsible for Luxemburg’s murder.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freikorps#/media/File:FreikorpsBerlinStahlhelmM18TuerkischeForm.jpg">Henrich/WikimediaCommons</a></span>
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<p>Luxemburg was born on March 5, 1871 in <a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&amp;rls=en&amp;q=Zamosc&amp;stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOPgE-LUz9U3MDRPKzFQgjBNDC2rtMSyk630C1LzC3JSgVRRcX6eVVJ-UR4AbAswfTAAAAA&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiO3NeOlOXfAhWMXRUIHfT2B0YQmxMoATAUegQICBAc">Zamość, a city in Russian-occupied Poland</a>. Her parents knew from her earliest years that her <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/developmental-dysplasia-of-the-hip">congenital hip dysplasia</a> would not stop her from pursuing a passion for justice. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253715/original/file-20190114-43510-1w9i37d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253715/original/file-20190114-43510-1w9i37d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253715/original/file-20190114-43510-1w9i37d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=848&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253715/original/file-20190114-43510-1w9i37d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=848&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253715/original/file-20190114-43510-1w9i37d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=848&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253715/original/file-20190114-43510-1w9i37d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1065&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253715/original/file-20190114-43510-1w9i37d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1065&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253715/original/file-20190114-43510-1w9i37d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1065&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Luxemburg(right) with her friend Clara Zetkin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg#/media/File:Zetkin_luxemburg1910.jpg">Marcus Cyron/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>She studied philosophy and economics and in 1898 was awarded a PhD in law from the University of Zurich in Switzerland, where she was also exiled and in hiding from the Russian police. Her thesis charted <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1898/industrial-poland/index.htm">industrial development in Poland</a> from the Napoleonic Wars to the latter years of the Russian Empire.</p>
<p>Luxemburg wrote constantly, including passionate letters to close friends and fellow feminists Clara Zetkin and Luisa Kautsky. With their correspondence she fought the loneliness of her several imprisonments between 1904 and 1906 and during World War I. </p>
<p>She questioned everything – challenging Karl Marx, some of his theories and her male comrades who prevaricated on war, monarchy, bureaucracy and imperialism – all of which she vehemently opposed.</p>
<p>Luxemburg preferred organising within the labour movement to party politics and she <a href="https://www.marxist.com/prologue-to-rosa-luxemburgs-reform-or-revolution.htm">stood against the political class</a> who voted for war in 1914, seeing it as a betrayal of internationalism and the common interest of workers around the world.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253542/original/file-20190113-43541-1v1t6r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253542/original/file-20190113-43541-1v1t6r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253542/original/file-20190113-43541-1v1t6r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253542/original/file-20190113-43541-1v1t6r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253542/original/file-20190113-43541-1v1t6r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253542/original/file-20190113-43541-1v1t6r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=502&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253542/original/file-20190113-43541-1v1t6r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=502&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253542/original/file-20190113-43541-1v1t6r7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=502&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Luxemburg addressing a rally in 1907.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg#/media/File:LuxemburgSpeech.jpg">DatBot/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<h2>Lessons for the modern world</h2>
<p>What is Luxemburg’s contribution to our understanding of the world today? Threatened by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/23/destruction-of-nature-as-dangerous-as-climate-change-scientists-warn">environmental destruction</a>, <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/13/violence-against-women-pandemic-no-longer-hidden">violence against women</a>, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/global-inequality-worse-richest-poorest-developed-west-tax-evasion-wealthy-panama-switzerland-a7793801.html">gross inequality</a>, <a href="https://www.socialeurope.eu/precarious-work-precarious-lives">insecure and exploitative work</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/31/jair-bolsonaro-inauguration-brazil-president-brasilia-populist-leaders">the rise of the far-right</a>, her diagnosis of global capitalism is perhaps more relevant than ever.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="http://theconversation.com/beyond-rosa-luxemburg-five-more-women-of-the-german-revolution-you-need-to-know-about-109209">Beyond Rosa Luxemburg: five more women of the German revolution you need to know about</a>
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<p>For her, economic expansion and the resulting devastation of the environment was not a defect of global capitalism, but an inherent feature of a destructive system. In The Accumulation of Capital she explained that by definition, capital needed to <a href="https://www.imhojournal.org/wp-content/uploads/Hudis2C-P.-28201829.-Non-linear-Pathways-to-Social-Transformation-Rosa-Luxemburg-and-the-Post-Colonial-Condition.pdf">conquer, absorb and destroy</a> non-capitalist economies and territories to survive.</p>
<p>This is evident in the <a href="http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/11221/bolsonaro-plan-to-integrate-amazon-into-the-economy-">recent decision</a> of Brazil’s new far-right president, Bolsonaro, to “integrate the Amazon region into the Brazilian economy”. This would expand the authority and reach of powerful agribusiness corporations into the Amazon Rainforest – threatening the rights and livelihoods of indigenous people and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/jair-bolsonaros-brazil-would-be-a-disaster-for-the-amazon-and-global-climate-change-104617">ecosystems their lives are entwined with.</a></p>
<p>Luxemburg criticised Marx for not having paid enough attention to these <a href="https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/sites/default/files/nf94_06hudis.pdf">external contradictions in economic growth</a>. A socialist revolution was, for Luxemburg, the only way to stop the engulfing of non-capitalist life into capitalism. </p>
<p>She taught that war, colonialism and unsustainable extraction from nature are products of global capitalism. The result is the loss of irreplaceable natural wealth and people struggling for food, water and shelter in the developing world. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="http://theconversation.com/capitalism-is-killing-the-worlds-wildlife-populations-not-humanity-106125">Capitalism is killing the world's wildlife populations, not 'humanity'</a>
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<p>Luxemburg also criticised economic growth based on <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch02.htm">financial speculation and profit making</a> in global stock markets. She argued that such a model is prone to crisis, as the 2008 crash demonstrated, which creates <a href="https://roarmag.org/magazine/building-power-crisis-social-reproduction/">unemployment and job precarity</a> that cannot be easily solved.</p>
<p>The economy loses the capacity to give employment to every adult with the capacity to work. Many of Luxemburg’s contemporaries, such as Eduard Bernstein, trusted that credit would alleviate capitalism’s tendencies towards crises. However, in Reform or Revolution Luxemburg argued that credit could only <a href="https://marxismocritico.com/2011/12/06/marxs-theory-of-crisis-simon-clarke/">postpone and even intensify crisis</a>. </p>
<p>Economic crises that result in this way allow the far right to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2018/aug/02/austerity-and-cuts-like-bedroom-tax-directly-led-to-brexit-academic-research-suggests-politics-live">stoke division within communities</a> by turning widespread economic insecurity into a stick to beat refugees and immigrants with.</p>
<p>So can we save Earth from the global expansion of capital and the fascism that emerges from it? The hundredth anniversary of Luxemburg’s assassination should make us reflect on her foresight. As Luxemburg herself saw it, the choice is “<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/ch01.htm">socialism or barbarism</a>”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ana Cecilia Dinerstein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though best remembered for her role in the doomed German Revolution, Rosa Luxemburg's theories on how capitalism exploits people and nature need hearing today.Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, Associate Professor of Sociology, Critical Research on the Global Politics of Hope, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1090462019-01-11T17:17:26Z2019-01-11T17:17:26ZHow Viktor Orban degraded Hungary's weak democracy<p>The roots of democracy in Hungary are shallow. </p>
<p>That’s been especially clear in the last nine years, as Prime Minister Viktor Orban has created a repressive and increasingly authoritarian state, operating under a pretense of democracy. </p>
<p>In recent weeks the political situation has become volatile. By early 2019 the Hungarian government was the target of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-09/how-hungary-s-new-slave-law-fired-up-orban-s-foes-quicktake">a series of major demonstrations</a> in Budapest and other Hungarian cities. </p>
<p>A flash point was <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-08/orban-risks-first-union-strike-since-fall-of-the-iron-curtain">a new labor law</a> allowing employers to compel overtime to make up for the <a href="https://de.reuters.com/article/hungary-labour-manpowergroup/hungary-suffering-worst-labour-shortage-on-record-survey-idUKL8N1CV24M?type=companyNews">country’s labor shortage</a>. The shortage was caused by the emigration of nearly a million young and skilled workers during the Orban years and the regime’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/20/hungary-passes-anti-immigrant-stop-soros-laws">extreme anti-immigrant stance</a>. </p>
<p>It’s not clear whether the protests are a passing phenomenon or a surge of new interest in democracy. </p>
<h2>Conditions ripe for nationalism</h2>
<p>Hungarians have a history of authoritarian domination, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17380792">often by outsiders</a> – Mongols, Ottomans, Russians, Hapsburgs, Fascists and, after World War II, communist rule under the Soviets. </p>
<p>Having lived recently in Hungary for seven years, I witnessed how the psychological legacy of externally imposed rule has hobbled the growth of civic participation, a precondition for democracy. In Budapest, the common spaces of apartment buildings are often run down, and volunteering for an international civic organization is frowned upon. </p>
<p>After the <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-100812">fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989</a> and <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/10/23/Hungary-declares-itself-a-republic/1072625118400/">the end of Soviet domination</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Hungary/Government-and-society">Hungarians went through two decades of democratic development</a>, including a parliamentary system, a free media, an independent judiciary and growing civic participation. </p>
<p>But the global <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/blog/2008/oct/29/hungary-imf">financial crisis of 2008 hit Hungary</a> harder than other countries in the region, <a href="https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/art3_mb201007en_pp85-96en.pdf">driving the economy down and unemployment up</a>. It left many people feeling no better off than they had been during communism. Nationalism grew in the Hungarian countryside, where xenophobia thrived.</p>
<p>These were the preconditions for Viktor Orban’s sustained attack on Hungary’s weak democracy after coming to power in 2010. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253307/original/file-20190110-43529-171hovc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253307/original/file-20190110-43529-171hovc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253307/original/file-20190110-43529-171hovc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253307/original/file-20190110-43529-171hovc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253307/original/file-20190110-43529-171hovc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253307/original/file-20190110-43529-171hovc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253307/original/file-20190110-43529-171hovc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Protesters walk past riot police officers during an anti-government march in central Budapest, Hungary, Dec. 21, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Hungary-Protests/fddc8cabe20c43418aa2f0352d927b7e/5/0">AP/Marko Drobnjakovic</a></span>
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<h2>Orban ascendant</h2>
<p>Orban had earlier <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Viktor-Orban">served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002</a>, steering the country toward <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/North-Atlantic-Treaty-Organization">membership in NATO</a> and <a href="https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries/member-countries/hungary_en">the European Union</a>, but then moving far to the right after his defeat at the polls. </p>
<p>Orban’s biographer, Jozsef Debreczeni, explained this shift <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/world/europe/viktor-orban-hungary-politics.html">to The New York Times</a>: “They say that power spoils good politicians. With Orban that wasn’t the case. It was the loss of power that did it.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/world/europe/viktor-orban-hungary-politics.html">The former prime minister blamed his defeat</a> on the media and democratic pluralism. He set out to make sure that when he came to power again he would never lose it. </p>
<p>In his 2010 campaign Orban fanned the flames of Hungarian discontent by attacking outsiders as oppressors, skillfully playing to Hungarians’ grievances about their history. </p>
<p>The European Union was his initial target. He depicted <a href="https://www.eurozine.com/together-against-orban-hungarys-new-opposition/">Brussels, the site of EU headquarters, as “the new Moscow</a>,” and he <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/03/when-dictators-cry-conspiracy/">smeared his opponents as stooges</a> of foreign interests. </p>
<p>He anticipated the flow of migrants into Europe and made them a target by <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16390574">stimulating anti-Muslim sentiment and fears of terrorism</a> long before the mass migration began in 2015. </p>
<p>Orban asserted that he was building a new model of governance, which he dubbed <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/hungary/2018-04-16/eastern-europes-illiberal-revolution">“illiberal democracy</a>.” In reality, the mixture of voting and authoritarianism was an Orwellian hypocrisy in which the winner of an election, like Viktor Orban, could claim a mandate to undermine democratic institutions. </p>
<h2>Undermining civil society</h2>
<p>After his 2010 election, Orban set out to centralize power.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/world/europe/hungary-orban-media.html">He took over the media</a> through a combination of <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/media-law-outrage-hungary-s-orbanization-is-worrying-europe-a-736706.html">political and financial pressure</a>, regulation, censorship and disinformation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-constitution-idUSBRE92B0OM20130312">Then he went after the judiciary</a>. He weakened the rule of law by stacking Hungary’s Constitutional Court with allies, limiting its jurisdiction and forcing the early retirement of judges. </p>
<p>His next target was civil society. He accused organizations that receive funding from abroad of “<a href="http://ecnl.org/hungarian-law-on-the-transparency-of-organisations-supported-from-abroad-what-is-at-stake/">serving foreign interests</a>,” and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e3888348-bb23-11e7-9bfb-4a9c83ffa852">arranged for the investigation of groups critical of the government</a> while also attacking intellectual freedom. </p>
<p>After an extended <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/26/eu-launches-legal-action-against-hungary-higher-education-law-university">regulatory campaign, last month</a> Orban forced one of Europe’s leading international graduate institutions, Central European University, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-soros-ceu-move/soros-founded-school-says-forced-out-of-hungary-on-dark-day-for-europe-idUSKBN1O218Z">to leave the country</a> by refusing to allow it to continue awarding U.S.-accredited degrees in Hungary. </p>
<p>From 2009 to 2016, I was the president of Central European University. The university was <a href="https://www.ceu.edu/about/history">founded in 1991</a> by Central European democratic leaders Vaclav Havel, Bronislaw Geremek and Arpad Goncz and the Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros. Its mission was to help revive intellectual freedom and academic excellence in the region, and today it <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/central-european-university">ranks among</a> the top 100 universities in the world in international studies.</p>
<p>In campaigning for reelection last year, Orban made George Soros a target of his xenophobic rhetoric. Using lies with anti-Semitic overtones, he smeared the 88-year-old Soros as an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/22/hungary-viktor-orban-george-soros">instigator of Europe’s refugee crisis</a> and a danger to “Hungary’s Christian civilization.” This was a particularly cynical attack, since <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/hungarys-freudian-political-fight-orban-vs-soros/">Viktor Orban had been the beneficiary of a Soros scholarship</a> to Oxford in 1988. </p>
<h2>Civil society fights back</h2>
<p>The Orban model of illiberal governance is deeply corrupt. </p>
<p>Illiberal regimes breed oligarchies that promote favoritism, steal from the public, eliminate competition and create incentives for talented people to emigrate. </p>
<p>Transparency International, a leading anti-corruption organization, ranks Hungary under Orban as <a href="https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2017">the second-most corrupt country in Europe</a> behind Bulgaria. Billions of euros of EU funding for Hungarian roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects have been flowing through contracts awarded to loyal allies of the Orban regime. </p>
<p>But corruption can stir up popular opposition. </p>
<p>In 2017, 250,000 people in Hungary <a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/06/24/a-new-hungarian-liberal-party-challenges-the-autocratic-viktor-orban">protested the government’s effort</a> to host the 2024 Olympics because of growing evidence of the regime’s corruption and the likelihood that lucrative Olympic contracts would benefit its oligarchs. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/39059452">The government eventually abandoned</a> the bid.</p>
<p>Civil society can find ways of resisting illiberal governance, especially in the digital sphere. Autocratic regimes can control traditional media, but <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/12/06/this-explains-how-social-media-can-both-weaken-and-strengthen-democracy/">shutting down social media is more difficult</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/29/hungarians-protest-internet-tax-plan-orban">That’s how 100,000 Hungarians were mobilized</a> and took to the streets in 2014 when the Orban government announced that it would tax citizens for using the internet. </p>
<p>The government backed down. Today, courageous online reporting by <a href="http://hungarianspectrum.org/2016/11/13/the-orban-governments-corruption-unveiled-by-investigative-journalists/">Hungarian investigative journalists has provided and published damning evidence</a> of the Orban regime’s corruption. </p>
<p>How great is the risk that the Orban model will spread? </p>
<p>The elections of <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/07/new-illiberal-international">illiberal leaders in Italy</a>, <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/hungary/2018-04-16/eastern-europes-illiberal-revolution">Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe</a> are clear danger signs. Viktor Orban’s hand has been strengthened in Hungary by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/world/europe/angela-merkel-european-union.html">waning influence of Angela Merkel in Germany</a> and the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. </p>
<p>The European Union could take a stand against authoritarian governance in a member state, but it has <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/state-of-disunion/">so far failed to discipline the regime</a> in Hungary that is destroying the democratic values on which the EU has been build.</p>
<p>In the end, internal opposition is perhaps the only way to challenge a ruler who claims that a democratic election is a mandate to dismantle the institutions of democracy. </p>
<p>It is too early to tell whether Hungary’s nascent protest movement will grow, but based on early manifestations this winter, democracy in Hungary may be showing some signs of life. </p>
<p>Whether it has staying power will depend on the movement’s capacity to unite a fragmented opposition and mount an effective campaign in the upcoming <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/elections-press-kit">elections this spring for the European Parliament</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109046/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Shattuck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has transformed from a liberal into an authoritarian leader who uses the tools of democracy to attack civil society. Hungarians are protesting in the streets.John Shattuck, Professor of Practice in Diplomacy, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1025312018-09-07T20:00:53Z2018-09-07T20:00:53ZGreen Bay Packers fans love that their team doesn't have an owner – just don't call it 'communism'<p>In July, I was walking with my parents through the newly constructed Titletown District in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a new community development across the street from Lambeau Field, where the Green Bay Packers play their home games. It features a local brewpub, a boutique hotel, free outdoor games like foosball and shuffleboard and a large practice field, where kids can play football.</p>
<p>At one point, I heard my dad say, “I know who this is.” He had picked out the Packers’ president, Mark Murphy, hurriedly making his way through the swarming crowd of people. Murphy kindly paused to shake my father’s hand and then my mother’s and then my own.</p>
<p>As Murphy moved on, my dad’s next reaction was interesting to me as a political scientist. </p>
<p>“The Packers are the only team with a president instead of an owner,” he said, turning to me. “You know, with every other team in the NFL, all that money the team makes, that goes straight to the owner.” Proudly, he continued, “The Packers don’t have an owner. All that money goes back to the community, the fans. It builds stuff like this,” motioning toward Titletown.</p>
<p>On our ride home, with Packer talk behind us, my dad started to ask me about my job prospects. I’m training to be a political theorist in an oversaturated job market with <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/08/28/more-humanities-phds-are-awarded-job-openings-are-disappearing">an overabundance of Ph.D.s</a>, <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/Are-You-in-a-BS-Job-In/243318">increasing university administration</a>, increasing reliance on – ahem, <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Great-Shame-of-Our/239148">exploitation of</a> – adjunct instructors, and what feels like an all-time low in the diminution of the value of the humanities.</p>
<p>My job prospects are not good. </p>
<p>Next he asked why I decided on <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Immanuel-Kant">Immanuel Kant</a>, the German philosopher, as my dissertation topic.</p>
<p>I explained that I had seriously considered Marx. But I didn’t choose him because I thought it would limit my job prospects further. </p>
<p>“Why?” My dad asked. </p>
<p>“Well, you know, because people often associate Marx with communism.” </p>
<p>“Communism – no, no, no,” he said. “I don’t want anything to do with communism. The very idea of it sickens me.”</p>
<p>In my head, I thought, “What an interesting cognitive dissonance.” Wasn’t the principle virtue of the Green Bay Packers based in a communist idea: collective ownership of the means of production? And because there is no owner, doesn’t that mean its proceeds go back into its community?</p>
<p>I’m not really interested in the degree to which the Packers are a communist organization. But I am interested in my father’s reaction to the word “communism,” and how this response conflicted with a real-world example of one of communism’s animating ideas. </p>
<p>He has not, to my knowledge, ever read Marx or any genuinely communist literature. But he has obviously adopted a negative attitude to the word.</p>
<p>Capitalist ideology seems to have launched a successful marketing campaign against communism. To be a communist, in my father’s mind, is to be against freedom. It is to want total control over the lives and fates of all individuals in society. It is to be a Stalinist. </p>
<p>What he fears isn’t communism; it’s totalitarianism. </p>
<p>I couldn’t bring myself to point this out. I couldn’t tell him, “Dad, everything you just said about the Packers – that’s communism.”</p>
<h2>A special situation</h2>
<p>On <a href="https://www.packers.com/community/shareholders">Aug. 18, 1923</a>, the Packers became the first and only publicly owned team, selling <a href="http://archive.jsonline.com/sports/packers/46741862.html/">$5,000 in shares</a> to improve the team’s struggling finances. </p>
<p>Owning stock in the Packers is not like owning <a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2012/01/13/are-the-green-bay-packers-the-worst-stock-in-america/">other stock</a>, however. It pays no dividends. Although fans earn nothing financially by owning stock, this unique arrangement does ensure that profits don’t go into the pocket of one or a handful of owners. Profits go instead to <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/green-bay-packers-shareholders-team-owners">Green Bay Packers, Inc</a>. What fans gain – and not just those who own shares – is the assurance that their team will not leave Green Bay, the smallest market of all major American professional sports leagues.</p>
<p>In 1997, fresh off a Super Bowl win, the franchise turned again to its fans as “investors.” The team offered more fans the opportunity to join existing shareholders by selling additional shares. For $200 they could “own stock” in the team. Well aware of the fact that being an owner in this instance offers no real financial stake in the team, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney/2011/12/08/buying-a-piece-of-the-packers/#2891e82455bb">fans proudly purchased 120,000 shares</a>. </p>
<p>In 2012, the team again expanded its sale of stock, <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d5d825773c0/article/packers-broaden-stock-sale-offer-another-30000-shares">selling an additional 30,000 shares</a>. I remember my uncle excitedly showing me his share, framed and displayed prominently in his otherwise lightly adorned living room.</p>
<p>The Packers are not only unique in the NFL for being a fan-owned, nonprofit team, they are the only team the NFL will allow to be. The 1960 constitution of the NFL states, in what is known as the the <a href="https://www.nfl.com/static/content/public/static/html/careers/pdf/co_.pdf">Green Bay Rule</a>, that “charitable organizations and/or corporations not organized for profit and not now a member of the league may not hold membership in the National Football League.” <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/those-non-profit-packers">According to a member of the Packers’ board of directors</a>, the model in Green Bay “is truly a special, special situation.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235095/original/file-20180905-45172-1ae30s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235095/original/file-20180905-45172-1ae30s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=454&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235095/original/file-20180905-45172-1ae30s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=454&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235095/original/file-20180905-45172-1ae30s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=454&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235095/original/file-20180905-45172-1ae30s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=571&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235095/original/file-20180905-45172-1ae30s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=571&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235095/original/file-20180905-45172-1ae30s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=571&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Green Bay Packers stock certificates are distributed to all shareholders, with many fans framing them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Obama-Packers-Football/cb03baa7bb41452ca4017dd2ad090a5c/22/0">AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Admittedly, the Packers organization still functions within capitalism. Although it lacks an owner, the team otherwise engages in all the same market-based exchanges as other teams. The Packers do show, however, how one communist principle might float within a capitalist sea. Without an owner, more people overall benefit. The team benefits first to be sure. But its interest happens to be the first interest of fans like my dad as well.</p>
<h2>Sensing and seeing exploitation</h2>
<p>My dad’s passion for the game is undeniable. My biased view is that it is unique, even among die-hards.</p>
<p>Otherwise, my dad is a rather typical Wisconsinite of his generation. He was born and raised in <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sheboygan,+WI/@43.7462263,-88.851258,8z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x88035fc1bb4a495f:0x32f8eceab418e29!8m2!3d43.7508284!4d-87.71453">Sheboygan</a>, where he still lives. </p>
<p>He grew up in an era when higher education was not the assumed post-graduation trajectory, so he became a laborer in a toilet seat factory. </p>
<p>I’m proud of him for that. I’m proud, particularly, because being a laborer is hard work. I know because I worked with him for two summers in college.</p>
<p>What makes it hard, for starters, is that the factory line always goes at the same pace. This means that if you have energy and would like to work quickly, you can’t. If you are feeling tired, sore or sluggish, you must keep up with the brisk, mechanical pace of the line. The job takes a physical toll. </p>
<p>I remember getting home from work one night and sitting down to watch a movie on the couch at 7:00 p.m. I woke up the next morning, still on the couch, leaving for work in the same clothes because I didn’t have time to change. I was 18. My dad has worked there 40 years and will continue to do so until he retires at 65.</p>
<p>As a laborer in a family-owned factory, my dad is well aware who profits when the company does: The family who owns it. Educated entirely on biographies of the American founders and iconic presidents, he has a surprising knack for seeing exploitation and inequality. I saw this in action when he went on about the benefits of the Packers not having an owner. </p>
<p>Like my father, my brother-in-law has a knack for seeing exploitation in action. In a recent diatribe, he railed against the popular view that professional athletes make too much money. <a href="https://www.theodysseyonline.com/pro-athletes-are-paid-excess">According to the argument</a>, athletes make extraordinary sums of money for playing a game, for doing something children do for free. That argument concludes that athletes ought to be paid less.</p>
<p>But my brother-in-law sees the big picture. Despite all the money they make, professional athletes are really making money for the owners – <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/packers-financials-show-that-nfl-made-billions-despite-national-anthem-controversy/">gobs of it</a>.</p>
<p>Even though professional athletes make insane salaries by comparison to my father and my brother-in-law, they make far less than the owners. And this despite the fact that the owners themselves don’t do anything except own the team. </p>
<p>Without using any of the vocabulary – with no reference to bourgeois and proletariat, to owners of the means of production, and even without using the term “exploitation” – my brother-in-law has rather accurately described one of Marx’s main critiques of capitalism: Labor is fundamentally exploitative. Those who create surplus value are not the ones who benefit from it.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take Marx, apparently, to see what’s wrong with the owner-laborer, bourgeois-proletariat relation.</p>
<h2>Refreshing an old idea with a new word?</h2>
<p>When I teach Marx to my students, I ask them what comes to mind when they hear the name “Marx.” One of the first words listed is “communism,” but another is “Russia” or “the Soviet Union.” </p>
<p>Once we’ve assembled a list of associations, we begin to investigate how they came about. </p>
<p>I tell them that if you go to the <a href="https://europeforvisitors.com/germany/leipzig/museum-runde-ecke.htm">Museum in the Round Corner</a>, a former German Democratic Republic government office in East Germany’s lovely Leipzig, you’ll find a photo of a rally. </p>
<p>In a massive stadium, thousands of citizens each hold up a unique placard. Collectively each picture forms one gigantic image that can be seen from above. Organized by the communist government, the image is a blown-up portrait of Karl Marx with the phrase “Wir ehren Marx” – “We honor Marx.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235099/original/file-20180905-45143-1kthk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235099/original/file-20180905-45143-1kthk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=435&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235099/original/file-20180905-45143-1kthk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=435&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235099/original/file-20180905-45143-1kthk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=435&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235099/original/file-20180905-45143-1kthk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=546&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235099/original/file-20180905-45143-1kthk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=546&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235099/original/file-20180905-45143-1kthk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=546&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Delegates meet in East Berlin to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, whose visage is displayed on stage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-Germany-FES-/2b246c2942f2da11af9f0014c2589dfb/9/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This display is an example of how the U.S.S.R. worked to make it look like it operated on Marxist principles. But communists such as <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/world-revolution-1917-1936">C.L.R. James</a> did not view Russia under Stalin as a true communist government. Nor did other scholars, like <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/396931.The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism">Hannah Arendt</a>, who instead characterize Stalinist Russia as totalitarianism. It’s important to remember that Marx did not advocate totalitarian government. My Dad, however, associates communism with Stalinist Russia – and thus associates it with totalitarianism. </p>
<p>So much the worse for Marx. </p>
<p>If my father could dissect the vampirism of football franchise owners, if my brother-in-law could analyze the fundamentally exploitative structure of labor without him, is the biggest source of people’s attitudes toward communism the word itself?</p>
<p>If “communism” is too laden with historical failures and semantic difficulties, are “socialism” or “social democracy” better alternatives?</p>
<p>They, too, seem to register similar anxieties in society. </p>
<p>Although Bernie Sanders openly <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35364868">adopts the monikers</a>, “socialist” and “Democratic socialist” as a member of the Democratic Party – as do ascendant figures in the party like <a href="https://twitter.com/Ocasio2018?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a> – such politics continue to be <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/bernie-sanders-and-the-misery-of-socialism-1529959476">maligned</a>. </p>
<p>Attitudes are beginning to change. <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socialism-capitalism.aspx">A recent Gallup poll</a> shows that 57 percent of democratic-leaning poll-takers view socialism favorably. A deeper look at the demographics is revealing, however. Although attitudes to socialism are becoming more favorable overall, it is quite clear that the working class of my father’s generation are among the slowest to come around. </p>
<p>Of my father’s age group – 50 to 64 – only 30 percent viewed it favorably. </p>
<p>Perhaps an entirely new word needs to be coined. Hell, why not call it Packerism? </p>
<p>If you want a political movement to work in Wisconsin, that’s what to call it. But of course, what might be a successful rebrand in Wisconsin is not likely to be successful across the country as a whole. </p>
<p>So if not by calling it Packerism, how can the left renew an old idea with a new word?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102531/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan J. Kellner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many Americans seem to like seeing communist ideas in action, but have a visceral reaction to the word ‘communism.’ Might it be time to refresh an old ideology with a new set of terms?Alan J. Kellner, PhD Candidate in Political Science, Northwestern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/991252018-08-13T10:25:44Z2018-08-13T10:25:44ZA socialist's primary win doesn't herald a workers revolution in the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231518/original/file-20180810-2921-o0yf3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a California fundraiser in August</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP/Jae C. Hong</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anyone anticipating a golden dawn of Marxist-Leninist communism soon in the United States might have to wait a while longer – perhaps forever. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/26/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-joe-crowley-new-york-14-primary/index.html">surprise victory of socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a> over longtime Democratic New York Congressman John Crowley in a New York congressional primary has been featured prominently in the news. That was soon followed by headlines proclaiming the radical wing of the Democratic Party wants to take it over.</p>
<p>Both are noteworthy for a number of reasons. But they do not herald a workers’ revolution in the United States.</p>
<p>Despite the surprise around Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, the <a href="https://www.dsausa.org/">Democratic Socialists of America</a>, or DSA, of which Ocasio-Cortez is a member, is not an upstart on the American political scene. Part of a long history of socialism in America, the Democratic Socialists have had relationships with progressive Democratic Party candidates and members of Congress for decades.</p>
<p>I have conducted <a href="https://repository.asu.edu/attachments/135145/content/Pout_asu_0010E_13635.pdf">research</a> in areas of the world once dominated by socialism. When I teach my <a href="https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/1245719">political ideologies class</a>, I point to the long history of socialism that has contained many and various voices.</p>
<p>Socialism, in the broadest sense, posits that since society’s wealth is created by its workers, its workers should benefit from the fruits of their labors and administer them as they please.</p>
<p>The DSA’s history of moderation and collaboration with the American establishment sets it apart in history against more radical and utopian socialist parties, both in the U.S. and the rest of the world.</p>
<h2>Socialism’s European history</h2>
<p>Socialism, conservatism and liberalism <a href="http://yoksis.bilkent.edu.tr/pdf/files/7963.pdf">constitute the three cardinal political ideologies</a>. </p>
<p>Socialist ideas grew in importance as thinkers criticized the liberalism that has dominated the West since <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/enlightenment">the Enlightenment</a> in the 18th century. </p>
<p>Socialism is often associated with <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Marx">Karl Marx</a>. For Marx, capitalism unjustly concentrated the wealth of the many in the hands of a few. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231519/original/file-20180810-2906-1ox2fzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231519/original/file-20180810-2906-1ox2fzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=760&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231519/original/file-20180810-2906-1ox2fzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=760&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231519/original/file-20180810-2906-1ox2fzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=760&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231519/original/file-20180810-2906-1ox2fzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=955&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231519/original/file-20180810-2906-1ox2fzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=955&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231519/original/file-20180810-2906-1ox2fzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=955&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Karl Marx in 1875.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Marx and his intellectual collaborator, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Friedrich-Engels">Friedrich Engels</a>, saw the misery of factory workers in 19th-century England. They expected the lives of the working class to get ever worse. At some point, they believed, workers would recognize their misery and overthrow the governments in advanced capitalist countries. </p>
<p>Then, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Communist-Manifesto">Marx and Engels believed</a>, a dictatorship would rule temporarily while society was reorganized in the interests of the workers. Eventually, this workers’ state would wither away to leave self-governing, satisfied workers with plenty of leisure time to engage in fulfilling pursuits. Marx named this latter state “communism.” </p>
<p>But socialism is not just about Marx.</p>
<p>English martyr St. Thomas More is sometimes seen as the earliest <a href="http://www.thomasmorestudies.org/g-c1.html">socialist</a>. Socialism’s defining principle of equitable distribution of society’s goods appears in his 1516 work “<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2130">Utopia</a>.”</p>
<p>One of More’s characters states, “As long as there is any property … I cannot think that a nation can be governed either justly or happily: not justly, because the best things will fall to the share of the worst men; nor happily, because all things will be divided among a few … the rest being left to be absolutely miserable.”</p>
<p>The misery and poverty of those without adequate resources is a central theme in socialist thought.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Owen">Robert Owen</a>, an early 19th-century British industrialist, <a href="http://robert-owen-museum.org.uk/Plight_of_the_Unemployed">wrote</a>, “The rapid accumulation of wealth created by the industry of the people … [is] in the hands of capitalists who created none of it, and who misused all they acquired.” </p>
<h2>Socialism comes to the United States</h2>
<p>While socialist ideology was developed in England, with the notable contribution of certain Germans, like Marx and Engels, it wasn’t long before the idea gained a following in the United States. Robert Owen himself brought socialist ideas to the U.S. in his experimental, utopian community of <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/travel/ct-trav-0629-new-harmony-indiana-20140627-22-story.html">New Harmony, Indiana</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://debsfoundation.org/index.php/landing/debs-biography/political-activist/">Eugene V. Debs</a> is the political figure most associated with American socialism. </p>
<p>A railroad worker, <a href="https://www.dsausa.org/almost_a_century_ago_another_democratic_socialist_ran_for_president_of_the_united_states">Debs ran as the presidential candidate</a> for the Socialist Party of America five times from 1900 to 1920. Debs remains American socialism’s most successful candidate, receiving <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1912_Election/">6 percent of the popular vote in 1912</a>. </p>
<p>Debs held that workers in the United States were denied a <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1905/revunion.htm">fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work</a>. From the wealth that they create, said Debs, workers receive only about 17 percent. </p>
<p>Aligning himself with American workers links Debs, through Owen and More, to the fundamental tenet of socialism: a distribution of wealth that recognizes working people as the rightful owners of their product. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231521/original/file-20180810-2909-1jfwmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231521/original/file-20180810-2909-1jfwmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=453&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231521/original/file-20180810-2909-1jfwmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=453&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231521/original/file-20180810-2909-1jfwmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=453&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231521/original/file-20180810-2909-1jfwmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=570&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231521/original/file-20180810-2909-1jfwmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=570&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231521/original/file-20180810-2909-1jfwmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=570&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A poster from the 1912 Debs campaign.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Democratic Socialists of America</h2>
<p>The Socialist Party of America, came, as socialist parties often do, to <a href="https://www.socialistparty-usa.org/anniversaryjournal.pdf">a crisis in 1972</a>. </p>
<p>The Debs faction wanted to perpetuate his pacifist position and opposed the Vietnam War. The other faction, led by political activist and author <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/08/the-still-relevant-socialist/378331/">Michael Harrington</a>, supported the war as a means <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-0130.1996.tb00279.x">to check the Soviet Union</a>, whose human rights abuses and repressive authoritarian government were seen by some socialists as a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michael-Harrington-American-activist-and-author#ref1189095">betrayal of their movement</a>. </p>
<p>Harrington also saw this as a way to distance himself from <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/democratic-socialists-used-to-be-decent-1531347159">the anti-Americanism many associated with socialism</a>. By 1973, Harrington had taken his faction out of the Socialist Party of America and formed the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michael-Harrington-American-activist-and-author#ref1189095">Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee</a>. </p>
<p>From the beginning, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1979/03/25/the-coming-out-of-us-socialists/9b2bb679-2f37-4ac1-b5dc-cc8cd788685f/?utm_term=.a61813583540">committed to working with</a> the Democratic Party, labor, racial minorities and feminists. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/books/review/Isserman-t.html?_r=1">Harrington adopted a pragmatic brand of socialism</a> that he described as being “on the left of the possible.” It <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1979/03/25/the-coming-out-of-us-socialists/9b2bb679-2f37-4ac1-b5dc-cc8cd788685f/?utm_term=.a61813583540">opposed Soviet-like concepts</a> American socialists had once endorsed, such as centralization of the economy and public ownership of major enterprises.</p>
<p>The DSA was founded in 1982 <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/5/15930786/dsa-socialists-convention-national">by the merger of</a> Harrington’s DSOC with the smaller New American Movement, a socialist group that had grown out of the student groups of the 1960s. </p>
<h2>Socialism moves towards the center</h2>
<p>Some long-held DSA policies are hardly distinguishable from today’s mainstream politics. </p>
<p>On important matters of international affairs such as trade and terrorism, the DSA has historically and consistently remained in touch with general American attitudes. The DSA’s platform since 1982 has included a national health service <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/5/15930786/dsa-socialists-convention-national">and reining in the power</a> of multinational corporations. </p>
<p>Members of Congress, mayors and state legislators have been a part of the Democratic Socialists of America from its founding and throughout. By 1990, the DSA had 19 of its members in an elected office. That included two U.S. representatives – both from California – four state representatives and five mayors. This marginal success in elected office continues today as the party has <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/11/10/what_democratic_socialist_lee_carter_s_upset_win_suggests_about_the_left.html">35 elected officials</a> in its ranks.</p>
<p>While America’s most famous democratic socialist is <a href="https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/aug/26/bernie-sanders-socialist-or-democratic-socialist/">Bernie Sanders</a>, the Vermont senator and 2016 presidential candidate has not identified himself as a DSA member.</p>
<p>Ocasio-Cortez, who won the New York primary against an established Democratic party figure, espoused campaign positions that were right off of the 1979 DSOC platform – and <a href="https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/07/dnc_2016_10_big_ways_the_democratic_platform_diffe.html">recent Democratic Party positions</a>. Her message was “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/27/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-who-is-she-democrats-new-york-life-career-policies">economic, social, and racial dignity</a>.” She called for single-payer health care and attacked the influence of large corporations. </p>
<p>Given her win in a safe Democratic seat, it appears likely that Ocasio-Cortez will be the 36th member of the DSA currently holding elected office in the U.S., thus extending the long history of socialism in America.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99125/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Pout has received funding from the Fulbright Porgram</span></em></p>The victory of a Democratic Socialist in a New York primary will not lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat. It's an incremental addition to the long history of moderate socialism in the US.Daniel Pout, Instructor School of Politics & Global Studies, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/997972018-07-30T13:08:12Z2018-07-30T13:08:12ZWhat the world can learn about equality from the Nordic model<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229814/original/file-20180730-106521-1yk96xp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rising inequality is one of the biggest social and economic issues of our time. It is linked to <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/employment/in-it-together-why-less-inequality-benefits-all_9789264235120-en">poorer economic growth</a> and fosters social <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2018/02/16/globalization-technology-and-inequality-its-the-policies-stupid/">discontent and unrest</a>. So, given that the five Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden – are some of the world’s most equal on a number of measures, it makes sense to look to them for lessons in how to build a more equal society.</p>
<p>The Nordic countries are all social-democratic countries with mixed economies. They are not socialist in the classical sense – they are driven by financial markets rather than by central plans, although the state does play a strategic role in the economy. They have systems of law that protect personal and corporate property and help to enforce contracts. They are democracies with checks, balances and countervailing powers. </p>
<p>Nordic countries show that major egalitarian reforms and substantial welfare states are possible within prosperous capitalist countries that are highly engaged in global markets. But their success undermines the view that the most ideal capitalist economy is one where markets are unrestrained. They also suggest that humane and equal outcomes are possible within capitalism, while full-blooded socialism has always, in practice, <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo27168809.html">led to disaster</a>.</p>
<p>The Nordic countries are among the most equal in terms of distribution of income. Using the Gini coefficient measure of income inequality (where 1 represents complete inequality and 0 represents complete equality) <a href="http://www.oecd.org/social/income-distribution-database.htm">OECD data</a> gives the US a score of 0.39 and the UK a slightly more equal score of 0.35 – both above the OECD average of 0.31. The five Nordic countries, meanwhile, ranged from 0.25 (Iceland – the most equal) to 0.28 (Sweden).</p>
<p><iframe id="WTnN6" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/WTnN6/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The relative standing of the Nordic countries in terms of their distributions of wealth is not so egalitarian, however. <a href="http://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/index.cfm?fileid=FB790DB0-C175-0E07-787A2B8639253D5A">Data show</a> that Sweden has higher wealth inequality than France, Germany, Japan and the UK, but lower wealth inequality than the US. Norway is more equal, with wealth inequality exceeding Japan but lower than France, Germany, UK and US. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the Nordic countries score very highly in terms of major welfare and development indicators. Norway and Denmark rank first and fifth in the <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2016_human_development_report.pdf">United Nations Human Development Index</a>. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have been among the six least corrupt countries in the world, according to the corruption perceptions index <a href="https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2016#table">produced by Transparency International</a>. By the same measure, the UK ranks tenth, Iceland 14th and the US 18th. </p>
<p>The four largest Nordic countries have taken up the top four positions in <a href="https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table">global indices of press freedom</a>. Iceland, Norway and Finland took the top three positions in a <a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-gender-gap-report-2017">global index of gender equality</a>, with Sweden in fifth place, Denmark in 14th place and the US in 49th.</p>
<p>Suicide rates in Denmark and Norway are <a href="http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.MHSUICIDEASDR?lang=en">lower than the world average</a>. In Denmark, Iceland and Norway the suicide rates are lower than in the US, France and Japan. The suicide rate in Sweden is about the same as in the US, but in Finland it is higher. Norway was ranked as the <a href="http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/">happiest country in the world</a> in 2017, followed immediately by Denmark and Iceland. By the same happiness index, Finland ranks sixth, Sweden tenth and the US 15th. </p>
<p>In terms of <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?view=chart">economic output (GDP) per capita</a>, Norway is 3% above the US, while Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Finland are respectively 11%, 14%, 14% and 25% below the US. This is a mixed, but still impressive, performance. Every Nordic country’s per capita GDP is higher than the UK, France and Japan.</p>
<h2>Special conditions?</h2>
<p>Clearly, the Nordic countries have achieved very high levels of welfare and wellbeing, alongside levels of economic output that compare well with other highly developed countries. They result from relatively high levels of social solidarity and taxation, alongside a political and economic system that preserves enterprise, economic autonomy and aspiration.</p>
<p>Yet the Nordic countries are small and more ethnically and culturally homogeneous than most developed countries. These special conditions have facilitated high levels of nationwide trust and cooperation – and consequently a willingness to pay higher-than-average levels of tax.</p>
<p>As a result, Nordic policies and institutions cannot be easily exported to other countries. Large developed countries, such as the US, UK, France and Germany, are more diverse in terms of cultures and ethnicities. Exporting the Nordic model would create major challenges of assimilation, integration, trust-enhancement, consensus-building and institution-formation. Nonetheless, it is still important to learn from it and to experiment. </p>
<p>Despite a prevailing global ideology in favour of markets, privatisation and macro-economic austerity, there is considerable enduring <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo18523749.html">variety among capitalist countries</a>. Furthermore some countries continue to perform much better than others on indicators of welfare and economic equality. We can learn from the Nordic mixed economies with their strong welfare provision that does not diminish the role of business. They show a way forward that is different from both statist socialism and unrestrained markets.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99797/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoffrey M Hodgson is a member of the Liberal Democrats.</span></em></p>The state plays a strategic role, but they are also driven by financial markets – not central plans.Geoffrey M Hodgson, Research Professor, Hertfordshire Business School, University of HertfordshireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/968722018-05-24T21:09:09Z2018-05-24T21:09:09ZThe nostalgia for socialism in the age of consumerism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220132/original/file-20180523-51091-1wqb4zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The socialist traffic symbol Ampelmann, seen here in Berlin, constitutes an international brand empire. In the age of mass consumerism, what&#39;s behind a nostalgia for socialist symbols and the sugarcoating of socialist regimes?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many of us — including those who have never lived through it — experience nostalgia about socialism. It’s why we buy Che Guevara T-shirts when we vacation in Cuba or Chairman Mao mugs if we visit China.</p>
<p>Socialism in our collective memory is not just a failed political and economic ideology. It’s also sold to us as a powerful romantic fantasy — <a href="https://www.bildatlas-ddr-kunst.de/teaching/75">a haven of creative ingenuity</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hna9g2zdMs8">a never-ending party</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJb4efZcFUM">a neighbourhood idyll</a> or <a href="https://www.ampelmannshop.com/en/">a place where love for nature and regional traditions thrive</a>. </p>
<p>Sociologists call these romantic idealizations about the past “popular memories,” stories that we like to consume through the aforementioned T-shirts and mugs, but also cookbooks, souvenirs, television programming, movies, vacations and other means of mass consumption.</p>
<h2>Socialist memories for sale</h2>
<p>This nostalgia for socialism is a multi-billion dollar business today. One of the world’s largest national markets for socialist nostalgia can be found in the country where I was born and raised: Germany. </p>
<p>Almost 30 years after the Berlin Wall came down, the popularity of <em>ostalgie</em> — a nostalgic yearning for life in the German Democratic Republic, also known as East Germany — is unbroken.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ampelmann.de/en/a-brand-with-a-history/the-development-of-the-east-german-ampelmaennchen/">socialist traffic symbol Ampelmann</a> constitutes an international brand empire. Socialist products such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/jul/10/spreewald-gherkins-brandenburg-germany">Spreewald gherkins</a> are bestsellers in Germany. And for many East Germans, staying in a <a href="https://www.ostel.eu/en/">GDR-themed hotel</a> means taking an active stand against what they perceive as a West German obsession with status consumption, hyper-individualism and competition.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220198/original/file-20180523-51127-5a0z18.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220198/original/file-20180523-51127-5a0z18.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=450&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220198/original/file-20180523-51127-5a0z18.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=450&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220198/original/file-20180523-51127-5a0z18.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=450&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220198/original/file-20180523-51127-5a0z18.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=566&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220198/original/file-20180523-51127-5a0z18.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=566&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220198/original/file-20180523-51127-5a0z18.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=566&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Ostel Hostel Berlin invites guests to ‘imagine that it is the year 1978 and the Berlin Wall still exists’ and features drab East German decor of the 1970s and ‘80s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Creative Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>German politicians, historians and journalists, however, have long condemned this nostalgia for socialism. Ostalgie, after all, is just a way to trivialize, if not entirely suppress, socialism’s crimes against humanity. Instead of celebrating GDR socialism, citizens should approach GDR culture as what it “really was,” and how it has been portrayed in most German school books since reunification: A system of oppression.</p>
<h2>Consumers of history</h2>
<p>My colleagues <a href="https://www.wiwi.europa-uni.de/en/lehrstuhl/mm/marketing/team_neu/wissma/Brunk/index.html">Katja Brunk</a>, <a href="https://www.gu.se/english/about_the_university/staff/?departmentId=092220&amp;userId=xhaben">Benjamin Hartmann</a> and I recently conducted a multi-year research study of the German ostalgie market, assessing nostalgic socialism. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucx100">Our study</a> identifies major problems with ostalgie. </p>
<p>Both the proponents of nostalgic socialism and their critics incentivize German historians, movie producers, brand managers, entrepreneurs and celebrities to create and circulate consumable versions of the socialist past. They cater to passionate collectors of socialism memorabilia, members of brand communities, binge-watchers of YouTube history documentaries — in short, emotional consumers of history.</p>
<p>Consider the German media landscape around socialism. </p>
<p>There have been romantic coming-of-age movies like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpKM8fIXs00"><em>Sonnenallee</em></a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJb4efZcFUM"><em>Good Bye, Lenin!</em></a>. There’s the massively popular <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-eJtmeooUM"><em>GDR Show</em></a> and, for fans of bittersweet love stories, there is the award-winning <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn51WwMn0Ks"><em>The Weissensee Saga</em></a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/245839058" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Movies like Good Bye, Lenin! have helped perpetuate nostalgic socialism in Germany.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For every socialism-inspired critique of Germany that has emerged since reunification, marketers have also created a nostalgic fantasy that captures its emotional essence but ignores its political significance.</p>
<p>These powerful narratives influence how all Germans regard the country’s past. German high-school students who are interested in forming a view on socialism can draw on two main marketplace resources: On the one hand, the market’s nostalgic socialism renders the GDR as a naïve fantasy world where young people wouldn’t let totalitarianism stand in the way of having a good time. On the other hand, school books render the GDR as an <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=49kirs6PzIYC&amp;pg=PA3&amp;lpg=PA3&amp;dq=gdr+unrechtsstaat&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=Jsf53eZnMe&amp;sig=pqRAWzPbi1kRsj_pnphU6kA26SM&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiAlpThwZzbAhUN84MKHVmBAEQ4ChDoAQhZMAg#v=onepage&amp;q=gdr%20unrechtsstaat&amp;f=false"><em>unrechtsstaat</em></a> (“a lawless state”) that spied on its citizens and imprisoned its critics.</p>
<h2>A critical perspective</h2>
<p>What’s more, neither the nostalgic socialists nor their critics inspire what history normally should: A critical perspective, not just on the past, but on the present too. If socialism only exists as a marketplace mythology, how can it serve as an alternative lens through which to understand present conditions?</p>
<p>While East and West Germans may be reunited today, Germany suffers from many problems, including the <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/20/news/economy/germany-election-inequality-income/index.html">rise of economic inequality</a>, the <a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12182/germany-migrants-coverup">refugee crisis</a> and <a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/germanys-populist-temptation/">rampant populism</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.politicalsciencenotes.com/socialism/democratic-socialism-definition-nature-methods-and-tenets/817">Ideas and concepts rooted in socialist theory</a> — such as solidarity, egalitarianism and social ownership — could play important roles in solving these and other problems. But both the nostalgic socialists and their critics cast such debates as regressive and unhelpful. This is a serious problem.</p>
<p>Contemporary capitalist societies like Germany rely on nostalgic socialism both as its context and its target. At best, this tendency reduces socialism to a Disney-fied consumption experience. At worst, it perpetuates entrenched social biases and inequalities. </p>
<p>The real value of a socialist past is that it can open up new ways for interrogating our capitalist present — and the forces we allow to shape both how we remember the past and how we forget.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Markus Giesler receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Big Design Lab.</span></em></p>In the age of rampant consumerism, there is nonetheless an odd nostalgia for socialist regimes and symbols. What does it mean?Markus Giesler, Associate Professor of Marketing, Schulich School of Business, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/966192018-05-23T10:42:02Z2018-05-23T10:42:02ZThe right-wing origins of the Jerusalem soccer team that wants to add 'Trump' to its name<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219269/original/file-20180516-155555-1iowx7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Throughout its storied history, the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team has won 13 state titles.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mideast-Israel-Racist-Fans/2d84200385f7491ea7da7cc94fcef681/38/0">AP Photo/Ariel Schalit</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a nod of appreciation to Donald Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, the Israeli soccer club Beitar Jerusalem <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/soccer/2018/05/14/fc-beitar-jerusalem-soccer-add-donald-trump-name/606654002/">announced</a> that it would like to change its name to Beitar “Trump” Jerusalem.</p>
<p>The willingness of a major sports team to openly embrace a polarizing politician might come as a surprise to American sports fans. In the U.S., teams are generally loathe to publicly embrace particular politicians or candidates, lest they needlessly alienate segments of their fan base.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0k4q_oAAAAAJ&amp;hl=en">I study the cultural dynamics that shape Israeli political identities</a>, and sports in Israel are a powerful political sphere. Unlike American sports teams, Zionist sports federations <a href="https://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/abs/10.1123/ssj.6.4.305">were originally organized along political fault lines</a> in the first half of the 20th century, with political rivals competing on the playing field.</p>
<p>Beitar Jerusalem is closely aligned with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, and its fans have long viewed themselves as political and economic outsiders. When it’s viewed through this lens, the team’s eagerness to associate itself with Trump and his brand of politics make sense. </p>
<h2>The team of Israel’s forgotten Jews</h2>
<p>In 1923, <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/betar">the Beitar movement</a> was founded in Latvia. A Revisionist Zionist youth movement, it differed from mainstream Zionism in a few key ways: It promoted a more aggressive expansionism, seeking to establish a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River; it assumed a belligerent posture toward the British government in Palestine; and, eventually, it adopted anti-socialist views.</p>
<p>In 1936, David Horn, who chaired the local Beitar branch in Jerusalem, recruited some Revisionist activists to establish the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club. Many of them belonged to the <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-the-irgun-etzel">Irgun</a>, an underground militia that launched attacks against Arab and, later, British targets. In the 1940s, because of some players’ affiliation with underground militias, British authorities expelled them. </p>
<p>After the state of Israel was established in 1948, Beitar’s image as a bastion of opposition only hardened. </p>
<p>In Israel’s early years, the socialist <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/mapai-political-party">Mapai party</a> was the country’s most powerful political party. Hapoel, the country’s largest soccer federation, belonged to the General Federation of Labor in Israel and, therefore, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d6849396-ef64-11de-86c4-00144feab49a">was closely aligned with Mapai</a>. </p>
<p>Beitar Jerusalem, on the other hand, tended to attract outsiders and the oppressed as fans. </p>
<p>During the 1950s and 1960s, Jerusalem absorbed many of the Jews who emigrated en masse from Arab and Muslim countries – people who, in Israel today, are called “<a href="http://img2.tapuz.co.il/CommunaFiles/44245324.pdf">Mizrahim</a>.” These immigrants, especially those from Northern Africa, often found themselves looked down upon, discriminated against, and relegated to the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13531040801902708?scroll=top&amp;needAccess=true">bottom of the socioeconomic ladder and the margins of the political system</a>. Those who didn’t belong to the ruling Mapai party suffered from additional discrimination in employment and housing.</p>
<p>In those years, Beitar attracted the sympathy of many Mizrahim, and the team’s circle of fans evolved into a kind of political and cultural opposition.</p>
<p>Politically, the team continued to be identified with the right-wing Herut party that was populist, anti-socialist and committed to territorial expansionism. Its bleachers, meanwhile, boomed with songs and slogans borrowed and adapted from old <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephardic_music">Sephardi Jewish</a> religious tunes. Until the early 1980s, the government-monopolized media – run by Jews of European origin – often excluded these songs from the airwaves.</p>
<h2>Success on the pitch – and at the ballot box</h2>
<p>Over time, Beitar transformed from a team with a local following to one with a large national fan base. Its close ties to Likud leaders probably helped build its following and winning the state cup tournaments in 1976 and 1979 – just around the time Likud <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Features/In-Thespotlight/This-Week-in-History-The-Likud-upheaval">seized power in 1977</a> – caused the team’s popularity to explode. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219271/original/file-20180516-155564-v0ikjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219271/original/file-20180516-155564-v0ikjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=404&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219271/original/file-20180516-155564-v0ikjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=404&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219271/original/file-20180516-155564-v0ikjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=404&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219271/original/file-20180516-155564-v0ikjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=507&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219271/original/file-20180516-155564-v0ikjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=507&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219271/original/file-20180516-155564-v0ikjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=507&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ascension of Likud founder Menachem Begin to prime minster in 1977 ended 29 years of Israeli Labor Party rule.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-Israel-BEGI-/e6fda8f69ce5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/5/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the 1980s, the overlapping affiliations of Likud, the Mizrahi people and the Beitar soccer team crystallized. Beitar Jerusalem’s successes during the 1980s and 1990s – <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beitar_Jerusalem_F.C.#Cup_competitions">three championships and three state cups</a> – made the team popular among a wider circle of fans, which included even some Arab citizens.</p>
<p>However, the team remained especially popular among the people <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-in-israeli-ethnic-politics-this-is-what-revenge-looks-like-1.5843527">who were once called</a> “the second Israel” – the lower-class Mizrahim.</p>
<p>While Beitar’s right-wing leanings are nothing new, since the 1990s a new vocal segment of its fan base have expressed anti-Arab attitudes. Beitar remains the only professional soccer team in Israel <a href="https://www.dailysabah.com/football/2017/09/14/israel-club-official-quits-after-saying-he-would-never-sign-muslims">to have never signed an Arab player</a>. The fan organization <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJOV_cN-JP8">La Familia</a>, established in 2005, has close ties with the country’s far-right politicians and it openly identifies with the outlawed <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/kach-kahane-chai-israel-extremists">Kach movement</a>, which seeks to install a theocracy and expel all Arabs from Israel and the territories it occupied in 1967.</p>
<p>The front office has made some attempts to bring Arab players on board, only to be <a href="https://www.haaretz.co.il/sport/israel-soccer/beitar/1.2678132">rebuffed by their fans</a>. Today, some hardcore fans consider anti-Arabism inherent to the identity of the club. Their repertoire of slogans and chants includes some rather <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ0EIr37BQY">profane anti-Arab and anti-Muslim messages</a>. </p>
<h2>What’s behind the racism?</h2>
<p>Scholars of Israeli society have tried to explain why many Mizrahi Beitar fans espouse nationalistic, hawkish and, at times, Arab-hating views. Some point out that the Mizrahim are in competition with Arabs over the same low-paying jobs. <a href="http://theory-and-criticism.vanleer.org.il/%D7%92%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9F-20-%D7%90%D7%91%D7%99%D7%91-2002/">Others argue</a> that, in a political atmosphere that stigmatizes Arab identities and discriminates against Arabs, Mizrahim feel the need to reject Arab elements of their identity. </p>
<p>At the same time, there are other soccer clubs, like Israel’s champion Hapoel Be'er Sheva and Bnei Yahuda, that have a big Mizrahi fan base. These teams signed Arab players, and their Mizrahi fans didn’t organize to prevent their inclusion.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219268/original/file-20180516-155569-2x4ghm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219268/original/file-20180516-155569-2x4ghm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219268/original/file-20180516-155569-2x4ghm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219268/original/file-20180516-155569-2x4ghm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219268/original/file-20180516-155569-2x4ghm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219268/original/file-20180516-155569-2x4ghm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219268/original/file-20180516-155569-2x4ghm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219268/original/file-20180516-155569-2x4ghm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beitar Jerusalem F.C. soccer supporters cheer during a match against the Arab team Maccabi Umm al-Fahm F.C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mideast-Israel-Soccer/5ea10da7fcd14db4b232498e0d49c6c8/34/0">AP Photo/Bernat Armangue</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So what’s going on with Beitar Jerusalem? Since 1967, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/06/50-years-israeli-occupation-longest-modern-history-170604111317533.html">when Israel occupied East Jerusalem</a> and annexed it against the will of its Arab residents, the city has been a hotbed of political extremism and violence. This political atmosphere interacts with Mizrahi fans’ feelings of marginalization; together, they can lead to hostile attitudes toward Arabs. </p>
<p>There are obvious parallels between Beitar Jerusalem’s fan base and the supporters of Donald Trump <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/trumps-rhetoric-of-white-nostalgia/485192/">who feel politically and culturally marginalized</a> – or, as Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-speech-at-republican-national-convention-trump-to-paint-dire-picture-of-america/2016/07/21/418f9ae6-4fad-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html?utm_term=.7af73e5548fe">describes them</a>, the country’s “forgotten men and women.” In this context, the team name change makes sense. </p>
<p>It’s unlikely, however, that it will be officially implemented.</p>
<p>First, it contradicts the <a href="http://football.org.il/SiteCollectionDocuments/FTP/leer/%D7%AA%D7%A7%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%AA%D7%A7%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%9F%20%D7%99%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%93%20%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%93%D7%9B%D7%9F%2030.11.15.pdf">bylaws</a> of the Israel Football Association, which states that teams can only be named after dead people. </p>
<p>Second, many Beitar Jerusalem fans are vocally opposing the proposed name change <a href="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FBeitarFcJerusalem%2Fposts%2F699124623591425&amp;">on social media</a>. </p>
<p>Trump, as an ally of Netanyahu, is very popular among these fans. But the team name has remained the same for all 82 years of the club’s existence. </p>
<p>In their view, tradition trumps political expediency.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tamir Sorek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Beitar Jerusalem has always attracted the outsiders, the oppressed and the victimized – Israel's 'forgotten Jews.'Tamir Sorek, Professor of Sociology, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/960872018-05-04T20:56:25Z2018-05-04T20:56:25ZShould we celebrate Karl Marx on his 200th birthday?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217800/original/file-20180504-166890-8ta56q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Karl Marx Monument in Chemnitz, in eastern Germany.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jens Meyer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some would argue that Karl Marx, author of “<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/">Capital</a>,” has been proven wrong on just about everything he wrote. The founder of scientific socialism was born 200 years ago on May 5.</p>
<p>These naysayers would point out that Soviet socialism imploded decades ago, and that China <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-china-went-from-communist-to-capitalist-2015-10">is heading merrily</a> down the capitalist path. Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels wrote in “<a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/">The Communist Manifesto</a>” that the capitalist ruling class “produced its own grave-diggers” in the proletariat – that is, the working class. However, we have yet to see workers pick up the shovel and bury capitalism once and for all.</p>
<p>Activists seeking to combat injustice and inequality, it can be argued, <a href="https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/%7Eoliver/SOC924/Articles/JohnstonLaranaGusfieldIdentitiesgrievancesandnewsocialmovements.pdf">have turned</a> not to class struggle but to social movements focused on gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and the environment. “Intersectionality” – the notion that people are defined by multiple identities, where class is just one among many – would seem to have <a href="https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/siso.2018.82.2.248?journalCode=siso">a lot more appeal</a> today than the effort to end “exploitation.” </p>
<p>However, as a <a href="https://ncas.rutgers.edu/about-us/faculty-staff/barbara-c-foley">scholar of Marxist theory and practice</a>, I find that such announcements of the death of Marxism are premature. </p>
<h2>Marx’s message is still relevant</h2>
<p>In the wake of World War II, various economists heralded the <a href="https://econ.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2016/02/Pini-The-Kuznets-Curve-and-Inequality.pdf">narrowing of the gap</a> between the richest and the poorest as evidence of the disappearance of class antagonisms. </p>
<p>But the long curve of capitalist development suggests that has widened, as illustrated in economist Thomas Piketty’s book “<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430006&amp;content=reviews">Capital in the Twenty-First Century</a>.”</p>
<p>The candle of the 2012 Occupy movement may have guttered, but its mantra of the 99 percent opposing the 1 percent <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35339475">is now a truiusm</a>. Everyone knows that the super-rich are <a href="https://www.globalresearch.ca/wealth-inequality-the-1-versus-the-99-realignment-repression-or-revolution/5495658">richer than ever</a>, while for most of the working-class majority – many of them caught in the uncertainty of the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/ubers-100-million-settlement-with-drivers-settles-very-little-heres-why-58336">gig economy</a>” – <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/2006/07/01/six-points-on-class/">belt-tightening</a> has become the new normal.</p>
<p>Those laboring in the formal and informal economies of much of Asia, Africa and Latin America, needless to say, <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/2015/07/01/imperialism-in-the-twenty-first-century">face conditions</a> that are far more dire. </p>
<p>Marx was correct, it would seem, when he wrote that capitalism keeps the working class poor.</p>
<p>He was also spot-on about capital’s inherent instability. There is some validity to <a href="https://isreview.org/issue/73/explaining-crisis">the joke</a> that “Marxists have predicted correctly 12 of the last three financial crises.” </p>
<p>Marx’s reputation has made a startling comeback, however, at times in unexpected circles.</p>
<p>In discussing the 2008 financial meltdown, one Wall Street Journal commentator <a href="http://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/cape-times/20150311/281947426321874">wrote</a>: “Karl Marx got it right, at some point capitalism can destroy itself. We thought markets worked. They’re not working.”</p>
<p>In 2017, the National Review <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/03/socialism-poll-american-culture-faith-institute-george-barna-tradition-liberty-capitalism/">reported that a poll</a> found as many as 40 percent of people in the U.S. “now prefer socialism to capitalism.” </p>
<p>Notably, too, the C-word – Communism – has been making a reappearance, as is indicated by recent series of titles: <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/513-the-idea-of-communism">The Idea of Communism</a>,“ ”<a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1872-the-communist-hypothesis">The Communist Hypothesis</a>,“ ”<a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1755-the-actuality-of-communism">The Actuality of Communism</a>,“ and ”<a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1151-the-communist-horizon">The Communist Horizon</a>.“ Until recently, the word was largely avoided by neo- and post-Marxist academics.</p>
<p>Class analysis remains alive and well. This is because capitalism is no longer as seemingly natural as the air we breathe. It is a system that came into being and can also go out of being.</p>
<h2>Is a better world possible?</h2>
<p>To say that there are threads connecting the present to a possible future of universal human emancipation is not to state that capitalism will collapse by itself. People have to make this happen.</p>
<p>Those who would like to see the world move through and past its present state face huge challenges, both theoretical and practical. Not least among these challenges is the need to parse out what succeeded and what failed in the past century’s attempts to create egalitarian societies.</p>
<p>But Marxism is not equivalent to everything that has been performed in its name. Marx’s work remains, to my mind, the most compelling framework for analyzing how the conflicting tendencies in present-day society contain the seeds of a more humane future.</p>
<p>Thanks, Karl. And, happy birthday.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96087/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barbara Foley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of literary radicalism asks whether Marx's writings are at all relevant to the world's struggles with inequality today and why he's no longer being relegated to the dustbin of history.Barbara Foley, Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies, Rutgers University Newark Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/958182018-05-04T13:40:19Z2018-05-04T13:40:19ZKarl Marx: ten things to read if you want to understand him<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217495/original/file-20180503-138586-aqagis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Karl_Marx_001.jpg">John Jabez Edwin Mayal/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>As the world reflects on 200 years since the birth of Karl Marx, his writings are being sampled by more and more people. If you’re new to the work of one of the greatest social scientists of all time, here’s where to start.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Marx’s own writing</h2>
<p><strong>James Muldoon, University of Exeter</strong></p>
<p>The long history of brutal, totalitarian “Marxist” regimes around the world has left many people with the impression that Marx was an authoritarian thinker. But readers who dive into his work for the first time are often surprised to discover an Enlightenment humanist and a philosopher of emancipation, one who envisaged well-rounded human beings living rich, varied and fulfilling lives in a post-capitalist society. Marx’s writings don’t just propose a revolutionary political project; they offer a moral critique of the alienation of individuals living in capitalist societies.</p>
<p><strong>1. An Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right</strong> (<em>Available <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm">here</a></em>)</p>
<p>Originally published in 1844 in a radical Parisian newspaper, this fascinating short essay captures many of Marx’s early criticisms of modern society and his radical vision of emancipation. It also introduces several of the key themes that would shape his later writings. </p>
<p>Marx claims that the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th century may have benefited a wealthy and educated class, but did not challenge private forms of domination in the factory, home and field. Marx theorises the revolutionary subject of the working class, and proposes its historic task: to abolish private property and achieve self-emancipation.</p>
<p><strong>2. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844</strong> (<em>Available <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm">here</a></em>)</p>
<p>Not published within his lifetime, and only released in 1932 by officials in the Soviet Union, these notes written by Marx are an important source for his theory of capitalist alienation. They reveal the essential outline of what “Marxism” is, and provide the philosophical basis for humanist readings of Marx. </p>
<p>In these manuscripts, Marx analyses the harmful effects of the organisation of labour in modern industrial societies. Modern workers, he argues, have become estranged from the goods they produced, from their own labour activity, and from their fellow workers. Rather than achieving a sense of satisfaction and self-actualisation in their labour, workers are left exhausted and spiritually depleted. For Marx, the antidote to modern alienation is a humanist conception of communism based on free and cooperative production.</p>
<p><strong>3. The Communist Manifesto</strong> (<em>Available <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vm1x2">here</a></em>)</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217516/original/file-20180503-153869-1y8ncej.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217516/original/file-20180503-153869-1y8ncej.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=1045&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217516/original/file-20180503-153869-1y8ncej.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=1045&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217516/original/file-20180503-153869-1y8ncej.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=1045&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217516/original/file-20180503-153869-1y8ncej.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1313&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217516/original/file-20180503-153869-1y8ncej.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1313&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217516/original/file-20180503-153869-1y8ncej.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1313&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Communist Manifesto in its original edition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Communist-manifesto.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Opening with the famous line, “a spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism”, the Communist Manifesto has become one of the most influential political documents ever written. Co-authored with Friedrich Engels, this pamphlet was commissioned by London’s Communist League and published on the cusp of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Revolutions-of-1848">various revolutions</a> that rocked Europe in 1848. </p>
<p>The manifesto presents Marx’s materialist conception of history and his theory of class struggle. It outlines the growing tensions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat under capitalist relations of production, and predicts the triumph of the workers.</p>
<p><strong>4. The German Ideology</strong> (<em>Available <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/">here</a></em>)</p>
<p>For anyone seeking to understand Marxism’s deeper philosophical and historical underpinnings, this is one of his most important texts. Written in around 1846, again with Engels, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GjXxsgEACAAJ&amp;dq=editions:4jEkJO3G6PYC&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwi_3dDotOnaAhWS2aQKHVlRCx0Q6AEIMDAB">The German Ideology</a> provides the full development of the two men’s methodology, <a href="http://routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/historical-materialism">historical materialism</a>, which seeks to understand the history of humankind based on the development of its modes of production.</p>
<p>Marx and Engels argue that individuals’ social consciousness depends on the material conditions in which they live. He traces the development of different historical modes of production and argues that the present capitalist one will be replaced by communism. Some interpreters view this text as the point where Marx’s thought began to emerge in its mature form.</p>
<p><strong>5. Capital (Volume 1)</strong> (<em>Available <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/">here</a></em>)</p>
<p>Published in 1867, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=te9CQ2P7VC8C&amp;dq=Capital%20marx&amp;source=gbs_similarbooks">Capital</a> is Marx’s critical diagnosis of the capitalist mode of production. In it, he details the ultimate source of wealth under capitalism: the exploited labour of workers. Workers are free to sell their labour to any capitalist, but since they must sell their labour in order to survive, they are dominated by the class of capitalists as a whole. And through their labour, workers reproduce and reinforce both the economic conditions of their existence and also the social and ideological structure of their society.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217488/original/file-20180503-83693-199ha5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217488/original/file-20180503-83693-199ha5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=825&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217488/original/file-20180503-83693-199ha5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=825&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217488/original/file-20180503-83693-199ha5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=825&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217488/original/file-20180503-83693-199ha5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1036&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217488/original/file-20180503-83693-199ha5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1036&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217488/original/file-20180503-83693-199ha5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=1036&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Capital, volume 1. Dive in.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kapital_titel_bd1.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Capital, Marx outlines a number of capitalism’s internal contradictions, such as a <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-12353-7_1">declining rate of profit</a> and the tendency for the formation of capitalist monopolies. While certain aspects of the text have been <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/05/04/marx-and-das-kapital-revisited/">questioned</a>, Marx’s analysis informs economic debate to this day. For anyone trying to understand why capitalism keeps falling into crisis, it’s still hugely relevant.</p>
<hr>
<h2>On Marx and Marxism</h2>
<p><strong>Robert Jackson, Manchester Metropolitan University</strong></p>
<p><strong>1. A Companion to Marx’s Capital</strong> – David Harvey</p>
<p>From social movements to student reading groups, from Thomas Piketty’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/piketty-has-redefined-capital-after-200-years-of-confusion-25770">Capital in the Twenty-First Century</a> to articles in the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/603b3498-2155-11e8-a895-1ba1f72c2c11">Financial Times</a>, Marx’s economic writings are at the centre of debate once again. And one of the figures most associated with these discussions is the geographer David Harvey. </p>
<p>Based on his popular online lecture series, <a href="http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/">Reading Capital with David Harvey</a>, this book makes Marx’s Capital accessible to a broader audience. Guiding readers through Marx’s challenging (but rewarding) study of the “laws of motion” of capitalism, Harvey provides an open and critical reading. He draws out the connections between this world-changing text and today’s society – a society which, after all, is still shaped by the economic crisis of 2008.</p>
<p><strong>2. Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life</strong> – Jonathan Sperber</p>
<p>For <a href="https://history.missouri.edu/people/sperber">Jonathan Sperber</a>, a historian of modern Germany, Marx is “more a figure from the past than a prophet of the present”. And, as its title suggests, this biography places Marx’s life in the context of the 19th century. It’s an accessible introduction to the history of his political thought, particularly as a critic of his contemporaries. Sperber discusses Marx in his many roles – a son, a student, a journalist and political activist – and introduces the multitude of characters connected with him. While Francis Wheen’s well-known <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-393-32157-9/">Karl Marx: A Life</a> is a more freewheeling account, Sperber’s writing is both highly readable and more deeply rooted in historical scholarship.</p>
<p><strong>3. From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation</strong> – Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor</p>
<p>Writing about the US just over 150 years ago, Marx noted that: “Labour in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin.” And the influence of his ideas about the relationship between race and class is visible in debates right up to the present day. </p>
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<p>Penned by academic and activist <a href="http://aas.princeton.edu/p/kytaylor/">Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor</a>, who came to popular prominence in the recent #BlackLivesMatter movement, this is <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/778-from-blacklivesmatter-to-black-liberation">a timely read</a> for those interested in the various ways Marx’s thought is being rebooted for the 21st century. A penetrating book, it connects the origins of racism to the structures of economic inequality. With plenty of Marxist ideas (among others) in her toolbox, Taylor critically examines the notion of a “colour-blind” society and the US’s post-Obama order to great effect.</p>
<p><strong>4. Why Marx was Right</strong> – Terry Eagleton</p>
<p>A call to reconsider the widely accepted notion that Marx is a “dead dog” from renowned literary theorist <a href="http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/english-literature-and-creative-writing/about-us/staff/terry-eagleton">Terry Eagleton</a>. In this <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300169430/why-marx-was-right">provocative and highly readable</a> book, Eagleton questions the plausibility of ten of the most common objections to Marx’s thought – among them, that Marx’s ideas are outdated in post-industrial societies, that Marxism always leads to tyranny in practice, that Marx’s theory is deterministic and undermines human freedom. Always witty and passionate, Eagleton peppers his spirited defence (with some reservations) of Marx’s ideas with his own literary and cultural insights.</p>
<p><strong>5. Jacobin magazine</strong> – edited by Bhaskar Sunkara (available <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/">online</a>)</p>
<p>In the era of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/you-think-occupy-is-incoherent-it-takes-time-to-change-history-4056">Occupy movement</a>, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-connection-between-take-a-knee-protests-and-citizens-united-84645">taking a knee</a>” and <a href="https://theconversation.com/hey-trump-the-womens-march-is-no-joke-90492">#MeToo</a>, the discussion of Marx’s ideas has gained an increasing presence on the internet. One of the most notable examples is the socialist magazine and online platform Jacobin, edited by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/books/bhaskar-sunkara-editor-of-jacobin-magazine.html">Bhaskar Sunkara</a>, which currently reaches around <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/about">1m viewers a month</a>.</p>
<p>Covering topics from international politics and environmental movements to the recent education strikes in Oklahoma and West Virginia and Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, it’s a lively source for anyone who wants to see an analysis of contemporary politics that’s influenced by Marx’s thought.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95818/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Muldoon is a member of the British Labour Party. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Jackson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Marx's spectre still haunts everything from economics to politics to literature. Here's where to start if you want to know more.James Muldoon, Lecturer in Political Science, University of ExeterRobert Jackson, Lecturer in Politics, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/956652018-04-26T13:29:00Z2018-04-26T13:29:00ZWhy only revolutionary change will deliver real freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216480/original/file-20180426-175038-jlec60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The ANC has had an exceptionally poor track record of governance.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Cornell Tukiri</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/freedom-day-celebrated-south-africa">Freedom Day</a> is an annual public holiday in South Africa to celebrate the anniversary of the country’s first democratic election in 1994. The euphoria of that moment is now a distant memory. To many the promise of a truly democratic future marked out in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-south-africas-freedom-charter-60-years-later-43647">Freedom Charter</a> of 1955, and even the less radical commitments of the new <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996">Constitution</a> adopted in 1996, seem to have been <a href="http://abahlali.org/node/16440/">betrayed</a>.</p>
<p>From communities, to the mines and the factories, university campuses, and rural areas there is a deep sense that the promise of what was once called “the new South Africa” has been dashed. This often manifests in <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-04-19-mayhem-in-mahikeng-looting-and-loathing-in-the-north-west/">popular protest</a> and the emergence of new forms of popular organisation outside the ruling African National Congress (ANC).</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">negotiated settlement</a> that brought an end to apartheid at the end of the Cold War was once widely – if not universally – celebrated. But the settlement was a compromise, a fact that quickly became apparent. The negotiated settlement ensured that the transition left many of the colonial features of South African society intact. The interests of the <a href="https://www.pambazuka.org/advocacy-campaigns/co-optation-african-national-congress-south-africa%E2%80%99s-original-%E2%80%98state-capture%E2%80%99">old white elites and the emerging black elites</a> were systematically prioritised over those of the working class and impoverished majority.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the ANC has had an exceptionally poor track record of governance. The party is regularly charged with <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2018/04/23/new-york-times-slams-anc-says-the-party-has-become-gorged-on-corruption_a_23417690/">wholesale corruption</a>, repression (including, most notoriously, the 2012 <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012">massacre</a> of striking miners at Marikana), sustaining neo-apartheid forms of rule in the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-04-24-traditional-leaders-not-rural-citizens-are-at-the-centre-of-the-land-expropriation-debate-2/#.WuHKLYhubIU">countryside</a> and the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-03-09-00-urban-land-question-is-also-urgent">cities</a> and the failure to redistribute <a href="https://www.news24.com/Columnists/GuestColumn/land-expropriation-without-compensation-what-does-it-mean-20180304-5">land</a> and democratise the commanding heights of the economy by removing it from the domination of white capital.</p>
<h2>A great disappointment</h2>
<p>The broad sense of disappointment in post-apartheid South Africa is not just a matter of sentiment. It’s an undeniable fact that millions are unemployed and millions languish in shacks.</p>
<p>The most recent <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/pdf/124521-REV-OUO-South-Africa-Poverty-and-Inequality-Assessment-Report-2018-FINAL-WEB.pdf">2018 World Bank Report</a> shows that over 55% of the population live below the poverty line. Those closest to the upper poverty line live on just R992 (USD$80) per person and over 76% live with the constant threat of poverty.</p>
<p>And, according to last year’s figures, 27.7% of the population is unemployed and up to <a href="https://theconversation.com/food-insecurity-is-a-reality-for-millions-of-south-africans-living-in-informal-settlements-48519">70% of homes</a> suffer food insecurity with many of these households skipping meals. </p>
<p>The education statistics are just as bleak. A <a href="https://www.google.co.za/search?q=age+at+grade+4&amp;oq=age+at+grade+4&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.2772j0j7&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8">2016 international literacy report</a> found that eight out of 10 school pupils in Grade 4, that is between the ages of 9-10, cannot read.</p>
<p>Two decades after the end of apartheid the majority of the black population still labours under conditions of exploitation, oppression and poverty despite South Africa being classified as a <a href="https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/investments-immigration/business/economy/south-africa-economy-overview">upper middle income economy</a> with the second largest economy on the continent. </p>
<p>The stark contrast between rich and poor makes South Africa the most <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/pdf/124521-REV-OUO-South-Africa-Poverty-and-Inequality-Assessment-Report-2018-FINAL-WEB.pdf">unequal country in the world</a>. This inequality is deeply raced and gendered. African women are consistently at the bottom of all indicators – from poverty to income, education, safety and food insecurity. The key question that arises is how have such conditions been able to continue in a country as rich as South Africa?</p>
<h2>Betrayal of a promise</h2>
<p>The ANC came to power via the strength of a <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/timeline-labour-and-trade-union-movement-south-africa-1980-1990">working-class mass movement</a> based both in communities and workplaces. But once the ANC attained power it demobilised the movements that had defeated apartheid. This allowed the party to become a vehicle for elite interests. Black elites sought to integrate themselves into existing power structures, and to become partners in the management of exploitation and oppression, rather than to build a just society.</p>
<p>The majority of black South Africans were left with <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf">liberal rights</a> on paper. In reality, however, they continued to suffer severe impoverishment and exploitation. As the gap between the promises of the “new South Africa” and lived reality widened, protests became <a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-soar-amid-unmet-expectations-in-south-africa-42013">more frequent</a>, and repression rapidly worsened.</p>
<p>The ANC lacked the political will to implement even the most basic economic reforms for the majority of South Africans. This is in stark contrast to <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2018-04-08-brazil-lulas-imprisonment-an-attack-on-the-working-class-globally/#.WuCGPdNubjA">Lula’s government in Brazil</a> which made modest reforms that, nonetheless, made a real difference to people’s lives. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216484/original/file-20180426-175044-1wj2fdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216484/original/file-20180426-175044-1wj2fdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216484/original/file-20180426-175044-1wj2fdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216484/original/file-20180426-175044-1wj2fdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216484/original/file-20180426-175044-1wj2fdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216484/original/file-20180426-175044-1wj2fdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216484/original/file-20180426-175044-1wj2fdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Many South Africans continue to wallow in poverty 24 years after freedom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Nic Bothma</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The rhetoric of the ANC, and its partners in the <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/">South African Communist Party</a> and the <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=925">Congress of South African Trade Unions</a> was, and is often, left wing, sometimes even socialist. But in reality, the country has been ruled by a comprador elite unwilling to make even the most limited moves to reform the countryside, the cities or the economy. The crux of the country’s disappointment lies in the fact that the ANC tied itself to the interests of capital rather than to the majority of South Africans.</p>
<h2>Ramaphosa no panacea</h2>
<p>Under Jacob Zuma’s disgraceful rule the degeneration of the ruling party spiralled into free fall. But as much as the removal of Zuma from the Presidency is to be welcomed, it <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/12/jacob-zuma-south-africa-anc">does not resolve</a> the country’s fundamental problems. Corruption did not begin with Zuma, and the entire negotiated settlement was a deal structured to keep rapacious forms of capitalism in place.</p>
<p>President Cyril Ramaphosa <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Economy/ramaphosa-a-deeply-compromised-capitalist-billionaire-saftu-20171228">is an oligarch</a> who became a key figure in the forms of accumulation and repression that have left the majority of black South Africans still impoverished and exploited after apartheid.</p>
<p>If freedom is to be realised for the majority of people, South Africa will have to construct a new rural order, a new urban order and a new economic order. But charming the elites in <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Economy/South-Africa/ramaphosa-wows-davos-money-20180128-2">Davos</a> and the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2018/04/18/were-here-for-the-ramaphosa-tells-london-elite_a_23414106/">City of London</a> won’t change the lives of impoverished and working class South Africans. A return to neoliberalism cannot be the answer to our tremendous problems.</p>
<h2>Towards socialism</h2>
<p>If the promise of freedom is to be restored to South Africans, the first step is to rebuild the power of the working class and impoverished people. And a clear vision of a better future needs to be developed that goes beyond liberal rights and into substantive entitlements. New formations need to build their power to the point where a new order can be constructed in the countryside, the cities and in the economy.</p>
<p>South Africa, is fortunate to still have a mass-based working class movement. By building the power of progressive formations of impoverished and working class people across the country the country can begin to build an alternative society in which socialism is not just empty rhetoric. It is in this kind of change, revolutionary change, that the hope for real freedom lies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95665/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vashna Jagarnath is affiliated with The National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa NUMSA</span></em></p>The removal of Jacob Zuma from power is to be welcomed but, it's not the answer to South Africa's problems.Vashna Jagarnath, Senior researcher, Centre for Social Change, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/949232018-04-13T11:19:16Z2018-04-13T11:19:16ZLabour and anti-semitism: these are the roots of the problem on the left<p>The current crisis in the Labour party has exposed some profound <a href="https://theconversation.com/labour-jeremy-corbyn-and-four-fault-lines-that-will-now-define-the-party-94311">fault lines</a> on the left. Despite considerable evidence of mounting antisemitism inside the party, which finally provoked a <a href="https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/jewish-community-protests-in-parliament-square-against-labour-antisemitism-enough-is-enough-1.461420">major protest</a>, some have responded with unabashed hostility. </p>
<p>Rather than taking the side of the overwhelming majority of Jews, and taking their obvious hurt and dismay seriously, some have charged them with dishonesty. They say they are <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-poll-says-antisemitism-row-is-exaggerated-8tdj7wffh">exaggerating</a> or inventing antisemitism where it does not or scarcely exists. They accuse them of manipulation and of conspiring against the leader of the party when he has every opportunity of rescuing the country from the disasters visited upon it by the Conservative government.</p>
<p>Beyond this, some have sought to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/30/labour-antisemitism-and-criticism-of-israel">explain away</a> antisemitism as a consequence of the supposedly bad behaviour of Jews, in the form of the conduct and even the existence of the state of Israel, and the supposedly uncritical support given to it by Jews in Britain.</p>
<p>Leaving aside the obvious fact that many Jews in the UK are by no means uncritical of many of the policies of the Israeli government, the central problem with these responses is that they partake of some classic antisemitic tropes. </p>
<p>The idea that Jews are not to be trusted when they say they have been attacked, the charge that they engage in special pleading and that they plot and scheme together for malign purposes, have long formed staples of antisemitic discourse. Historically, they have been central to the idea that there is a “Jewish Question” which somehow must solved – either by Jews behaving better (ideally by ceasing to be Jews) or (if they will not do so) by getting rid of them.</p>
<h2>The ‘Jewish Question’</h2>
<p>The far right was the most radical in its enthusiasm to solve the “Jewish Question” through the Holocaust but the notion that there is such a question has been shared by some on the left, too. It was first formulated in the modern world in the <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526104977/">Enlightenment</a>. </p>
<p>Some thought that there was something peculiarly problematic about Jews. This was not just their particular religion (seen as worse even than Christianity which at least had the virtue of making a universalist claim) but their behaviour and particular identity (as a “nation within a nation”). Even some of those who thought that Jews should now be included and given rights did so conditionally. The rights should be given on the basis that their supposedly “bad” behaviour should improve and their loyalties to each other be abandoned. If not, the door was left open to the possibility that Jews should be got rid of.</p>
<p>As antisemitism developed into an ultimately genocidal ideology, the persistence of the notion of a “Jewish Question” helped shape the response to it among some on the left. To them, antisemitism was somehow understandable because of the way Jews supposedly behaved, and that antisemitism might even be harnessed to the socialist cause, since antisemites were laying the blame for the evils of capitalism on Jews. This has been described as the “<a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/01/radicalism-fools-rise-new-anti-semitism">socialism of fools</a>” (not that helpful a formulation actually insofar as it suggests antisemitism is still some kind of socialism). </p>
<p>During and immediately after the Holocaust this way of thinking played its part in the reluctance of some to prioritise solidarity with Jews or to recognise the catastrophe that had befallen them. Worse, it helped shape a new form of Stalinist antisemitism in the communist bloc. Jews were violently attacked for their supposed disloyalty and treachery to the cause.</p>
<p>It was then that key elements of the latest reformulation of the “Jewish Question” were developed – in the form of an antizionism. This way of thinking focuses obsessively on Israel, where, not coincidentally, large numbers of Jews now live after the catastrophe that nearly destroyed the whole group. This state is regarded by some as uniquely evil. It is guilty of the worst of all crimes – of genocide, crimes against humanity and apartheid – and is the gravest threat to world peace. Once again, Jews have supposedly failed the test for inclusion in the modern world, now in the form of the world of legitimate nation states.</p>
<p>There has always been, on the left, another way of thinking – not about an imagined “Jewish Question”, but about antisemitism. From this perspective, the problem is not, and never has been, the behaviour, identity or religion of Jews, which is no worse than that of other groups. The problem is a view of the world which projects all the problems of society (at the national or international level) onto Jews.</p>
<p>It’s a view which not only fails to grasp the threat posed by antisemitism but condones and colludes with it. It’s a view that others (sadly) on the left need to challenge. They need to reject the whole idea of a “Jewish Question” in favour of an elemental and principled solidarity with Jews as they come under attack once again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94923/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Spencer is the author, with Robert Fine, of Antisemitism and the Left – On the Return of the Jewish Question, Manchester University Press, 2017.</span></em></p>The very debate around how Labour has dealt with this issue revolves around some key tropes of anti-semitism.Philip Spencer, Emeritus Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/942472018-04-04T10:47:46Z2018-04-04T10:47:46ZToday's youth reject capitalism, but what do they want to replace it?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212860/original/file-20180402-189821-131rfk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Today&#39;s youth are increasingly rejecting capitalism.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Phil Sears</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today’s youth <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/26/a-majority-of-millennials-now-reject-capitalism-poll-shows/?utm_term=.e8f05f5285ed">are increasingly unhappy</a> with the way their elders are running the world. </p>
<p>Their ire was most recently expressed when <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/3/19/17139654/march-for-our-lives-dc-march-24-protest">thousands of teenagers</a> and others across the country marched on March 24 demanding more gun control, a little over a month after more than <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/us/florida-shooting-victims-school/index.html">a dozen of their peers</a> were shot and killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida.</p>
<p>But there’s growing evidence that today’s young adults, ranging in age from 18 to 29 or so, are strongly dissatisfied with other fundamental aspects of our political and economic system. Specifically, growing numbers are rejecting capitalism. </p>
<p>This led us – a sociologist and an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DWGTo1cAAAAJ&amp;hl=en&amp;oi=ao">economist</a> – to wonder how would young people redesign the economic system if they could. The answer, based on recent surveys, should make any status-quo politician seriously rethink their economic policies.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212857/original/file-20180402-189804-1tertn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212857/original/file-20180402-189804-1tertn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212857/original/file-20180402-189804-1tertn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212857/original/file-20180402-189804-1tertn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212857/original/file-20180402-189804-1tertn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212857/original/file-20180402-189804-1tertn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212857/original/file-20180402-189804-1tertn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demonstrators march through Cincinnati during the March for Our Lives protest for gun legislation and school safety.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/John Minchillo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Rejecting capitalism</h2>
<p>We first wanted to better understand how young people feel about the current economic system. </p>
<p>So we started by examining a <a href="http://iop.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/content/160423_Harvard%20IOP_Spring%202016_TOPLINE_u.pdf">troubling 2016 Harvard University survey</a> that found that 51 percent of American youth aged 18 to 29 no longer support capitalism. Only 42 percent said they back it, while just 19 percent were willing to call themselves “capitalists.” </p>
<p>While it may be true that young people of any generation tend to have less support for incumbent economic and political systems and tend to change their views as they age, past polls on the topic suggest this is a new phenomenon felt especially by today’s youth. A <a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/an-enduring-culture-of-free-enterprise/">2010 Gallop poll</a> showed that only 38 percent of young people had a negative view of capitalism – and that was right after the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression, which <a href="https://d-nb.info/1011870347/34">hit young people</a> especially hard.</p>
<p><iframe id="FpERj" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/FpERj/6/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>What can we make of this? Do they prefer socialism, in which the government more actively regulates and intervenes in the economy and restricts individual choice? </p>
<p>It’s unclear. The Harvard poll showed just 33 percent said they favor socialism. A <a href="http://reason.com/poll">separate poll</a>, however, conducted in 2015 by conservative-leaning Reason-Rupe, found that young adults aged 18 to 24 have a slightly more favorable view of socialism than capitalism. </p>
<p>Their views contrast markedly with their older peers, who consistently tell pollsters they prefer capitalism by wide margins – more so as their age climbs. Still, the share of the overall population that questions capitalism’s core precepts is around the highest in at least 80 years of polling on the topic. </p>
<p>To be sure, the questions pollsters ask Americans vary significantly from poll to poll, and sample sizes aren’t always large enough to draw firm conclusions. </p>
<p>All the same, the data suggest that today’s young people are part of a vanguard of Americans losing faith in capitalism and ready to embrace something new. </p>
<p><iframe id="PZGWv" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/PZGWv/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>But what do they want?</h2>
<p>So if young people are increasingly rejecting capitalism but they’re ambivalent about socialism, what do they want? </p>
<p>To answer this, we need to explore what about capitalism they find so unsatisfying. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/26/a-majority-of-millennials-now-reject-capitalism-poll-shows/?utm_term=.e8f05f5285ed">follow-up focus group</a> to the Harvard study concluded that many of these young people feel that “capitalism was unfair and left people out despite their hard work.” A 2012 survey by the <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/01/11/rising-share-of-americans-see-conflict-between-rich-and-poor/">Pew Research Center found</a> that 71 percent of those 18-34 years of age perceive strong conflicts between the rich and the poor in American society. </p>
<p>A majority of young people said they believe that those with means got there because “they know the right people or were born into wealthy families.” </p>
<p>These views on the inequality inherent in the American economic system command majorities of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, conservatives, moderates and liberals. To us, this suggests the critical reason young people have lost faith in capitalism is that it has lost its ability to be fair. But they don’t seem to think an alternate system such as socialism can fix the problem.</p>
<p>Rather, we can begin to piece together what might work, in their view, by examining a <a href="https://www.nceo.org/assets/pdf/articles/PPP_results_employee_ownership.pdf">2015 survey by Public Policy Polling</a>, which asked participants their views on employee-owned companies and government intervention to encourage them. </p>
<p>The poll found that 75 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds support this, far more than every other age category, while 83 percent said employee-owned companies are as American as apple pie, hot dogs and baseball. </p>
<p>So these polls in a way suggest young people don’t want less capitalism, they want more of it. They just want to make sure it’s shared more broadly, such as by making it easier for more of us to become capitalists and share in the wealth we collectively create. </p>
<p>As two professors meeting this generation daily in our classrooms, we have been surprised by the strong support for these concepts in our college courses on economics and corporate governance.</p>
<p>Other surveys suggest that the desire for a more inclusive form of capitalism is becoming more widely held. A <a href="http://news.gallup.com/reports/199961/state-american-workplace-report-2017.aspx#aspnetForm">2016 Gallup State of the American Workplace</a> survey found that 40 percent of all American workers would leave their company to work for one that had profit-sharing.</p>
<p>And it’s becoming increasingly easy to do that as more companies in the U.S. embrace employee ownership in one form or another, some drawn by its <a href="http://papers.nber.org/books/krus08-1">ability to reduce turnover</a> and <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/search/node/blasi">improve economic performance</a>. And just last year, a <a href="https://www.certifiedeo.com/about_us">company started up in Silicon Valley</a> offering certification of employee-owned businesses “to build an employee-owned economy.” </p>
<h2>Gunning for the economy</h2>
<p>What Americans witnessed on March 24 was an energetic, dynamic and powerful new political force in America.</p>
<p>Right now it’s focused on guns. But this force may well turn its attention to the structure of corporations and an economic system that has led to ever-widening levels of inequality. </p>
<p>Just as lawmakers may want to rethink their views on gun rights, they may also want to begin re-examining their understanding of what capitalism is supposed to look like. </p>
<p><iframe id="z4GKq" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/z4GKq/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Blasi is affiliated with Rutgers University as a professor.
I also have an affiliation as a Senior Fellow with the The Aspen Institute.
I am currently co-principal investigator of a W.K. Kellogg Foundation research grant on employee ownership and modest income employees. The National Bureau for Economic Research Shared Capitalism Project received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Employee Ownership Foundation for our University of Chicago book&#39;s research. The Institute of which I serve as director, the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing receives funding from a number of foundations and individual donors to support fellowships and conferences in this area. The professorship I hold was endowed by the Beyster Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Douglas Kruse is affiliated with Rutgers University as a professor. I also have an affiliation as a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn. I am currently co-principal investigator of a W.K. Kellogg Foundation research grant on employee ownership and modest income employees. The National Bureau for Economic Research Shared Capitalism Project received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Employee Ownership Foundation for our University of Chicago book&#39;s research. The Institute of which I serve as associate director, the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing receives funding from a number of foundations and individual donors to support fellowships and conferences in this area. I am a Beyster Faculty Fellow at Rutgers supported by the Beyster Foundation.</span></em></p>The recent March for Our Lives showed just how unsatisfied American youth are with their leaders. Recent polls suggest the economic system may be the next item on their agenda.Joseph Blasi, J. Robert Beyster Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers UniversityDouglas L. Kruse, Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/917522018-03-06T19:31:22Z2018-03-06T19:31:22ZMis-red: why Bill Shorten is not a socialist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207997/original/file-20180227-36700-v05u1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bill Shorten is the longest-serving Labor leader since Kim Beazley in his first stint in office.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Successful politicians need fortune to smile on them – to be “hit in the arse by a rainbow”, as Paul Keating said of Peter Costello. If this is so, federal Labor leader Bill Shorten’s backside must by now be glowing brightly with all the colours and shades of the spectrum, from red and orange through to indigo and violet.</p>
<p>First, there was Kevin Rudd’s parting gift to the Labor Party: <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-13/how-do-labor-leadership-voting-rules-work/4955726">the changes</a> in 2013 to the way Labor leaders are elected. These changes have provided Shorten – and indeed any future Labor leader – with impressive insulation against an internal challenge. </p>
<p>It’s perhaps a modest claim to fame, but Shorten is the longest-serving Labor leader since Kim Beazley in his first stint in office (1996 to 2001).</p>
<p>Shorten’s luck didn’t end there. The Abbott government turned out to be one of the most accident-prone in our history. Episodes such as the <a href="http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/federal-budget/australians-think-federal-budget-2014-is-the-worst-in-a-very-very-long-time-according-to-this-graphic/news-story/3aede549c1cfe0db6eb3fc205feaba53">2014 budget debacle</a> are a once-in-a-generation political gift, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/03/how-giving-prince-philip-a-knighthood-left-australias-pm-fighting-for-survival">knighthood saga</a> a once-in-a-century job. </p>
<p>Even a <a href="https://www.tradeunionroyalcommission.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx">royal commission into trade union corruption</a> – seemingly designed by the government to damage Shorten – backfired after the commissioner, Dyson Heydon, accepted an invitation to speak at a Liberal Party fundraiser. That revelation landed on Shorten, who had made an uncomfortable appearance before the inquiry, like manna from heaven. Heydon’s eventual report had all the impact of last year’s telephone book being dumped in a wheelie-bin. </p>
<p>Malcolm Turnbull’s coup against Tony Abbott raised expectations that a more “progressive” prime minister would move the Coalition closer to the centre of Australian politics. Such hopes were almost immediately dashed, with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/nationals-extract-their-pound-of-flesh-from-turnbull-47582">refreshed Coalition agreement</a> strengthening the more conservative National Party. </p>
<p>The government’s poor performance at the 2016 election – and Turnbull’s subsequent loss of authority – eliminated any possibility of a more centrist Coalition. This was yet more good fortune for Shorten. </p>
<p>It would be hard to argue that Shorten quite deserves so much luck but in politics, deserts don’t count for a hill of beans. Turnbull and the Coalition appear to be in two minds about what to do with the Labor leader. Sometimes, in their telling, he is a “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-08/turnbull-and-shorten-trade-barbs-during-question-time/8252540">social-climbing sycophant</a>” with a habit of sucking up to the rich and powerful. </p>
<p>When Turnbull is in this mode, there is a clear subtext: that if I were not here as prime minister, Bill would be sucking up to rich and successful people like me. It’s hard to imagine this goes down especially well with most voters, who don’t mind people becoming rich and successful but dislike those who boast about it.</p>
<p>But Turnbull also <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/bill-shorten-the-most-dangerous-left-wing-leader-in-generations-says-malcolm-turnbull-20170812-gxuug0.html">told a Liberal audience</a> in August last year that Shorten is “the most dangerous left-wing leader of the Labor Party we have seen in generations”. </p>
<p>More recently, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/bill-shorten-accused-of-plagiarising-jeremy-corbyn/news-story/0a86de9bf23c6efabc6663651cd090a1">accused Shorten</a> of plagiarising the “socialist, populist playbook” of British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. And Turnbull <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/malcolm-turnbull-joins-insiders/9394476">railed against</a> “the most anti-business, the most anti-investment, the most anti-jobs policy of any Labor leader since Whitlam”. </p>
<p>These claims are about pushing the government’s stalled company tax cuts, a key issue that will divide the parties at the next election. But Turnbull and the Coalition have a hard sell, and it will take more than a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/16/abc-removes-corporate-tax-cut-analysis-after-complaints-from-malcolm-turnbull">letter of complaint</a> to ABC management and a bit of <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/malcolm-turnbull-stresses-urgency-of-company-tax-rate-cuts/news-story/a367d37a553fda7c1641811dba63b42a">PR work with Donald Trump</a> to get voters – and crossbench senators – around to their way of thinking.</p>
<p>The prosaic reality about Shorten, however, is that he is in many ways a garden-variety centre-left leader. </p>
<p>This species has become endangered – in some countries, virtually extinct – in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. But Australia is different. It was touched more lightly by the crisis than most other western economies. And partly for that reason, it has not experienced populist explosions of either left or right. </p>
<p>Pauline Hanson is small beer compared with Trump or France’s Marine Le Pen; the Greens will not emulate successful left-populist parties such as Greece’s <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/syriza-everything-you-need-to-know-about-greece-s-new-marxist-governing-party-10002197.html">Syriza</a> or Spain’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/31/podemos-revolution-radical-academics-changed-european-politics">Podemos</a>; and there are no Jeremy Corbyns lurking in the Labor caucus room. </p>
<p>Without such pressures, Labor has been able to craft its policies in a much more relaxed environment than many European social democratic and labour parties. Shorten goes through the motions of praising the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/10/bill-shortens-first-year-five-things-we-learned">Hawke-Keating reform model</a>, but he is sufficiently in tune with the times to know that this will only get him so far.</p>
<p>Such gestures are becoming a little like the way Chinese capitalists praise Chairman Mao: it’s diplomatic but also increasingly irrelevant.</p>
<p>Labor under Shorten makes an issue of inequality without hammering it home in the more forthright manner of the left-wing political forces that are transforming British and European politics.</p>
<p>And while the ALP has made plenty of gestures to the populist right over issues such as refugees, that has been a gradual capitulation to the centre-right in the context of two-party competition rather than, as in the case of some European countries, a panicky attempt to stop a right-wing populist party from stealing its working-class base.</p>
<p>Now that the Barnaby Joyce affair is losing steam, there will be a return to the more normal pattern of party contestation, at least until the government’s next own-goal. In the meantime, the contest between Turnbull and Shorten, like that between Abbott and Shorten before it, will be largely one between two unpopular leaders, performed for an electorate which, while less shaken by the times than many overseas, is becoming measurably ever more stroppy.</p>
<p>Dealing with that problem and its electoral consequences has become the central issue of Australian politics, whoever wins the next election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Bongiorno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The reality is that Bill Shorten is, in many ways, a garden-variety centre-left leader.Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814482018-01-21T21:01:32Z2018-01-21T21:01:32ZThe roots of organic farming lie in fascism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202511/original/file-20180118-158513-mlgw8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The roots of organic farming in the United Kingdom can be traced to the fascism movement that began after the First World War.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rick Barrett/ambitious creative co </span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1927 Henry Williamson published <em>Tarka the Otter</em>, the story of an otter living in the Torridge River in Devon, U.K. Recognized today as a classic of nature writing, it has seldom been out of print. </p>
<p>Though Williamson described the creature’s world in knowledgeable detail, he was not born and bred in Devon. Like a lot of soldiers who returned from the trenches of the Western Front, he abandoned London and headed out to the countryside to recuperate among the quiet villages and patchwork fields. </p>
<p>And like a lot of returned soldiers, he also came around to thinking that the British landscape and the people who worked it were worth defending against the corporations, banks and their political allies who threatened traditional ways of life.</p>
<p>In 1936 he joined <a href="http://www.edp24.co.uk/business/farming/unseen-1930s-photos-illustrate-the-story-of-henry-williamson-the-norfolk-farmer-who-flirted-with-fascism-1-5026352">Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists</a> and became a blackshirt, believing that fascism was the only ideology with a sensible programme for protecting the land. </p>
<p>The argument that fascism was a way to protect the land was persuasive and pervasive. It is a history that continues to resonate at the intersection between labour and politics. Reverberations were felt during the 2016 Brexit referendum and in its aftermath.</p>
<p>The history of the environmental movement in Britain emerges from several strands. Its roots in the extreme right wing are usually ignored. But Williamson belonged to a vocal group who believed organic farming was key to restoring rural Britain’s economic stability and future prosperity. </p>
<h2>Common ground</h2>
<p>It sounds perverse that contemporary organic farming has its origins in fascism. But both the hard left and hard right shared some common ground during the inter-war period. Both were in support of the worker against industrial capital; both were suspicious of mechanization in agriculture; and both argued that power should reside in the collective. </p>
<p>Both also freely used terms like “international banking” as code for a conspiracy against the working classes. Spotting the difference was difficult: For example, Mosley, (founder of the British Union of Fascists) always insisted he came from the left. </p>
<p>Another shared belief was that Britain’s national identity had been founded in the countryside. No figure better represented the ideal of the British character than the farmer, with his physique moulded by work, his hands stained with soil, his leathery face beaten by the weather. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202362/original/file-20180117-53314-14z8s2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202362/original/file-20180117-53314-14z8s2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=635&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202362/original/file-20180117-53314-14z8s2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=635&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202362/original/file-20180117-53314-14z8s2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=635&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202362/original/file-20180117-53314-14z8s2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=798&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202362/original/file-20180117-53314-14z8s2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=798&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202362/original/file-20180117-53314-14z8s2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=798&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A photo of a farm worker from Henry Williamson’s 1941 book ‘Life on the Norfolk Farm’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Henry Williamson Literary Society</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the 1930s more people lived in cities than rural centres but the ploughman and the shepherd remained emblematic: Staple images from Anglo-Saxon poetry and Medieval manuscripts through to Victorian photography. It was easy to make the equation from this mix of nostalgia and sentimentality that strengthening the rural economy invigorated the national character and vice versa. </p>
<p>Through small-scale, organic farming, Britain would not only rediscover its cultural origins but it would become self-sufficient.</p>
<p>An earlier generation of socialists, led by writer and textile designer William Morris, had advocated something similar: A return to traditional farming methods as a <a href="https://archive.org/details/artbeautyofearth00morrrich">protection against the destruction that mechanization threatened</a> to wreak on the agricultural sector. </p>
<p>Morris’s critical failure lay in his romanticism. What he proposed was essentially a form of self-improvement for men of property but there were no direct benefits for the working class in any of his arguments.</p>
<h2>Protecting British ‘root stock’</h2>
<p>Purity was a key word for the organic farming movement. Beyond the idea of produce free from contaminants, organic farming added lustre to that image of the farmer as being one with the soil. From the moment his pair of hands planted a seed to that when another picked the fruit, produce and process would be untainted. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this idea of purity invoked another: Eugenics.</p>
<p>It is convenient to forget but eugenics was once a platform for a number of avowed socialists: H. G. Wells, Marie Stopes and John Maynard Keynes all advocated eugenics. </p>
<p>The argument that intellectual, moral and physical weakness could be bred out sounded, if anything, compassionate to people who believed that the answer to the nation’s survival lay with science. </p>
<p>Organic farming was an effort to introduce the same concept of purity to agriculture in order to protect Britain’s root stock. The food placed on the English dinner table would be as wholesome as that image of the farmer.</p>
<h2>Kinship in Husbandry</h2>
<p>Williamson is one of the better known figures from the hard right wing of the organic farming movement but the key thinkers were Rolf Gardiner, Jorion Jenks and Gerard Wallop. </p>
<p>In 1941 Williamson joined them as a founding member of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793303001110">Kinship in Husbandry</a>, an organization of rural revivalists who believed that organic farming with its return to traditional methods would restore the moral, physical and economic health of the nation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202512/original/file-20180118-158522-1l7e4kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202512/original/file-20180118-158522-1l7e4kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202512/original/file-20180118-158522-1l7e4kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202512/original/file-20180118-158522-1l7e4kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202512/original/file-20180118-158522-1l7e4kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=502&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202512/original/file-20180118-158522-1l7e4kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=502&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202512/original/file-20180118-158522-1l7e4kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=502&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Tarka the Otter</em>, the story of an otter living in the Torridge River in Devon, U.K. is a nature writing classic. View of the River Torridge from the Tarka Trail.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Writing in the 1945 manifesto, <em>The Natural Order,</em> H. J. Massingham explained that husbandry was the group’s chosen term because, even though it evoked an earlier age of “hock-carts, wassails, and reaping the corn with songs and sickles,” it also implied a “loving management … acting towards nature in a family spirit.” </p>
<p>Not all the members supported fascism. The poet Adrian Bell argued that Nazism was essentially an urban movement and its platforms on agriculture were misguided. Philip Mairet, who would translate Sartre, also believed that purity and self-sufficiency were central to good farming but rejected right wing politics.</p>
<p>Post war, Kinship in Husbandry’s Nazi links proved an embarrassment, but only for the more moderate members. <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3180733">Jorion Jenks</a> went on join Eve Balfour in establishing the Soil Association in the late 1940s and he continued to use the charity as a vehicle to espouse his extreme right views into the late 1950s. </p>
<p>The publication of <a href="http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx">Rachel Carson’s <em>Silent Spring</em> in 1962</a>, with its exposé of the ways pesticides were poisoning the environment firmly shifted the argument for organic farming away from eugenics and nationalism towards more fundamental issues of public health.</p>
<p>This history challenges the assumption that environmentalism and progressive politics are symbiotic, or at the least inevitably compatible. It also reminds us of uncertainties that still resonate today. </p>
<p>When a working class base of British Labour supported UKIP and <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/07/after-brexit-red-ukip-prepares-take-labours-northern-heartlands">Brexit</a> during the 2016 European Union referendum, we heard echoes of that inter-war period when the politics of left and right were suddenly difficult to differentiate. </p>
<p>Once again, there were arguments from both sides that by breaking free from Europe, Britain could rediscover a more pure sense of identity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Toohey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Organic farming has roots in 20th century fascism, challenging the assumption that environmentalism and progressive politics are symbiotic.John Toohey, PhD Candidate, Art History, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/882592017-12-03T10:20:00Z2017-12-03T10:20:00ZNadya Krupskaya: the Russian revolutionary<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196722/original/file-20171128-7450-3acb2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vladimir Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antoon Kuper/flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.counterfire.org/women-on-the-left/15628-women-on-the-left-nadezhda-krupskaya">Nadezhda (Nadya) Krupskaya</a> was a significant figure in the radical movement that made the Russian Revolution a century ago. But, like many women in politics before and after her, Krupskaya has been reduced to her relationships to men. In her case, being the <a href="https://www.rbth.com/arts/2017/05/18/revolutionary-first-lady-the-life-and-struggles-of-lenins-wife_765659">wife</a> of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.</p>
<p>She was born into an impoverished family in St Petersburg in 1869. Her father, an aristocrat, had lost his commission as an officer, possibly for being suspected of being involved in revolutionary activities.</p>
<p>Krupskaya’s first political passion, as a teenager, was for Russian author <a href="http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/">Leo Tolstoy</a>’s <a href="http://www.ibe.unesco.org/sites/default/files/tolstoye.PDF">theory of democratic education</a>. For Tolstoy science needed to be democratised and placed in the service of the people as a whole rather than used as a weapon of domination and exploitation by an elite. In contrast to the rigid curriculum of the Russian schools of the day he argued for education based on an experiential and unstructured embrace of free and open inquiry.</p>
<p>In 1891, at the age of 22, Krupskaya began teaching evening classes in literacy and arithmetic to factory workers. By 1894 she was involved in underground Communist study groups and soon became involved in building factory workers’ organisations. </p>
<p>In 1896 Krupskaya was arrested and exiled to the Siberian village of Shushenskoye. Her first pamphlet, <a href="http://www.manifestopress.org.uk/index.php/publications2/65-the-woman-worker">The Woman Worker</a>, was written in 1899 and published, via an underground press, in 1901. It examines women’s work on the land, in the factories and in the family. It’s often said to have been the first Marxist text to specifically tackle the condition of women in Russia and a significant feminist text.</p>
<p>Krupskaya and Lenin had <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSkrupskaya.htm">met</a> in 1894 in a Communist discussion group. From the outset, their relationship was a meeting of comrades. Krupskaya’s classes with factory workers gave her knowledge about conditions in the factories that was vital to the pamphlets that Lenin was writing at the time.</p>
<p>Lenin and Krupskaya had shared their exile in Siberia, on condition that they married. It has been suggested that their relationship was more a matter of shared political commitment than a passionate love affair. But this is pure speculation. Both Lenin and Krupskaya spoke very little of their courtship, marriage and personal lives.</p>
<h2>Secret letters</h2>
<p>After her release Krupskaya moved to Geneva where, in 1903, she became the secretary of the editorial board of <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/RUSkrupskaya.htm">“Iskra”</a> (Spark), the underground paper of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In his autobiography, fellow Russian revolutionary <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/RUStrotsky.htm">Leon Trotsky</a> <a href="https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/29/nadezhda-krupskaya-woman-center-organization-russian-bolshevik-revolution-married-lenin-26-years/3">recalls</a> that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She was at the very centre of all the organisation work; she received comrades when they arrived, instructed them when they left, established connections, supplied secret addresses, wrote letters, and coded and decoded correspondence. In her room, there was always a smell of burned paper from the secret letters she heated over the fire to read…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1910 Krupskaya was a co-founder of International Women’s Day, which was first celebrated in Russia in 1913. It was conceived, as Krupskaya <a href="http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/887/iwd.html">made clear</a> in her article in the radical women’s journal Rabotnitsa, as a revolutionary celebration. Four years later, on 8 March 1917, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/womens-protest-sparked-russian-revolution-international-womens-day">massive strike</a> that started the Russian Revolution began on International Women’s Day, and was led by women textile workers.</p>
<p>After the revolution Krupskaya was appointed as deputy to the People’s Commissar of Education. After Lenin’s death in 1924, and the ascent of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/z8nbcdm">Joseph Stalin</a> to lead the Soviet Union, women were rapidly isolated and there was rapid regression in terms of state and party positions on gender and sexuality. International Women’s Day was turned into a twee celebration of patriarchal values, not, as it has been <a href="https://www.internationalwomensday.com/About">noted</a>, unlike Mother’s Day in the United States. </p>
<h2>No anomaly</h2>
<p>Krupskaya, like other leading women in the new Stalin-led state, was marginalised. But in her case, there was another aspect to the hostility that she encountered. She was Lenin’s widow. Her political and intellectual life and work was rapidly reduced to her relationship to her husband.</p>
<p>This is no anomaly. In South Africa for example, it was also the case for <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winnie-madikizela-mandela">Winnie Madikizela Mandela</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-heloise-first">Ruth First</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/albertina-nontsikelelo-sisulu">Albertina Sisulu</a> among others. These three women, although independent ANC and SACP activists in their own right, were often defined by the men they were married to (Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo and Walter Sisulu respectively).</p>
<p>It’s no wonder that many powerful women choose to be without men, or not to highlight their lives as wives or mothers, because all their work then gets defined by their relation to the men in their family.</p>
<h2>Public attack on Stalin</h2>
<p>In December 1925, Krupskaya led a <a href="http://links.org.au/node/1544">public attack</a> on Stalin. But in May 1927 she backed down from this position for reasons that remain unclear and contested. She wrote important articles on children, leisure and the green city. In 1933, she backed away from some of her feminist positions, again for reasons that remain unclear and contested. </p>
<p>After her <a href="https://toritto.wordpress.com/2016/01/31/lenins-wife/">death in 1939</a> she was largely, although not entirely, forgotten as anything other than the woman who had been Lenin’s wife. It’s not unusual for historians to credit men around Lenin for aspects of his success. Krupskaya however, fades into her role as Lenin’s wife, a role that is assumed to be contained to the domestic space, which itself is assumed to be a space outside of politics.</p>
<p>Writing almost a week after her death Leon Trotsky <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/03/krupskaya.htm">described</a> Krupskaya as one of the most “tragic figures in revolutionary history”. This view of Krupskaya could only be held by Trotsky because he defined her by the men in her life. He defined her by Lenin, and later by Stalin. </p>
<p>Trotsky’s one-dimensional view of Krupskaya is typical of the narratives about women that seek to flatten their identity and have them fit the simplistic narratives of patriarchy. She could not be, as men are often acknowledged to be, a complex individual with a capacity to struggle, love, deceive and hate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88259/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vashna Jagarnath is affiliated to the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (Numsa)</span></em></p>Russian revolutionary Nadezhda Krupskaya, like other leading women in the new Stalin-led state, was marginalised. But in her case, because she was Lenin's widow.Vashna Jagarnath, Senior Lecturer, History Department, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/847062017-10-02T16:49:32Z2017-10-02T16:49:32ZWhy the dream of a prosperous, united nation continues to elude South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187576/original/file-20170926-19571-1we1vpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Violent service delivery riot near Soweto, Johannesburg.Millions of poor South Africans live in shacks.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The goal of one united South African nation living prosperously under a constitutional democracy remains elusive. This is in spite of the constitution boldly <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-preamble">declaring that</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>South Africa belongs to all who live in it, both black and white, united in our diversity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The central issue raised by the struggle against <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">racial injustice</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-slavery-and-early-colonisation-south-africa">colonialism</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/imperialism-and-socialism-context-africa">imperialism</a> – what is referred to in South Africa as the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/national-question-post-94-south-africa-discussion-paper-preparation-50th-national-conference">National Question</a> - reemerged dramatically three years ago. It started as a demand for the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall">removal of the statue</a> of arch imperialist and colonialist, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes">Cecil John Rhodes</a>, from a prominent position at the University of Cape Town. It rapidly grew into a powerful movement in support of <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/decolonisation-17372">decolonisation</a>. The National Question, it appears, remains highly relevant and unresolved.</p>
<p>In a new book, <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-unresolved-national-question-in-south-africa/">The Unresolved National Question: left thought under apartheid</a> a number of authors set out the multifaceted origins of the idea.</p>
<h2>Political traditions</h2>
<p>Four main contested political traditions have shaped this debate. </p>
<p>The first is the <a href="https://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/study-guide/">Marxist-Leninist</a> tradition, which goes back to the <a href="http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Soviet_Union">Soviet Union</a> in the 1920s and the debates between <a href="http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lenin-Vladimir.html">Lenin</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Stalin">Stalin</a> and <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/roy/index.htm">Manabendra Nath Roy of India</a>. </p>
<p>At the centre of these debates was the idea of two distinct stages in the struggle for national liberation, a <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03005/06lv03132/07lv03140/08lv03145.htm">national democratic stage</a> and then a <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/31.htm">socialist stage</a>. This strategic approach was <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2638">adopted</a> by the Communist Party of South Africa - now the South African Communist Party (SACP), in 1928/1929. It later developed into the idea of South Africa as a <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/apartheid-south-africa-colonialism-special-type">colonialism of a special type</a>.</p>
<p>The second is the Congress tradition, associated with the African National Congress <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/african-national-congress-anc">(ANC)</a> and its iconic leaders, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/chief-albert-john-mvumbi-luthuli">Albert Luthuli</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-kaizana-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a> and <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>. At the heart of this tradition is the idea of one <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-origins-of-non-racialism/">non-racial nation</a>. Historian Luli Callinicos shows how Mandela and Tambo steadily widened their concept of the nation to include all races.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=435&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=435&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=435&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=546&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=546&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187791/original/file-20170927-24173-15rxnsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=546&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Life-long friends and ANC leaders Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Professor Robbie van Niekerk, a South African expert on social policy, traces the roots of the ANC’s economic and social thought to the 1943 <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/africans-claims-south-africa-adopted-anc-1943-annual-conference">Bill of Rights of African Claims</a> and the 1955 <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>. In these documents “the nation” can only be fully realised through the universal extension and provision of public goods by a democratic state. Or, as Luthuli <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-unresolved-national-question-in-south-africa/">put it</a>, the new government should have as its objective the creation of a democratic welfare state with redistributive social policies in health, education and welfare.</p>
<p>The third is the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/65974.Leon_Trotsky">Trotskyite</a> tradition. This goes back to the thirties in the Western and Eastern Cape and is associated with the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/non-european-unity-movement-neum">Unity Movement</a>. This approach is developed in the book by the late Marxist historian and then activist <a href="http://www.historicalstudies.uct.ac.za/hst/news/martin-legassick-has-passed-away">Martin Leggasick</a>. Leggasick and his colleagues were to form the <a href="https://eng.ichacha.net/zaoju/marxist%20workers%20tendency%20of%20the%20anc.html">Marxist Worker Tendency</a> of the ANC developing Trotsky’s notion of the <a href="http://www.redletterpress.org/Permanent%20Revolution.html">“permanent revolution”</a>. Revolution, they argued, developed continuously and unevenly on a world scale, rather than proceeding through discrete chronological stages. Legassick was eventually expelled from the ANC.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/DC/Acn1964.0001.9976.000.019.Oct1964.7/Acn1964.0001.9976.000.019.Oct1964.7.pdf">Africanist tradition</a> identified with <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Sobukwe</a> and the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pan-africanism">(PAC)</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=400&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187790/original/file-20170927-24188-1akg7hx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=503&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sobukwe, founder of the Pan Africanist Congress.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As political scientist Siphamandla Zondi makes clear, Africanism is a much broader tradition than the PAC. For the Africanists, the nation state is a product of Western modernity and colonialism. At the centre of the tradition is the notion of “epistemic disobedience”. The decolonisation of knowledge and its production are seen as a “rebellion against the neocolonised order of things”</p>
<h2>Continuity and rupture</h2>
<p>In the book, we discuss the debates that emerged after the banning of South Africa’s national liberation movements in 1960. We suggest that a process of continuity and rupture takes place. On the one hand, movements emerge that attempt to break with the past. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the ethnic nationalism promoted by the apartheid government through its <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/first-bantustans-or-homelands-comes-existence-when-transkei-regional-authority-institute">Bantustan policy</a>, </p></li>
<li><p>the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/definition-black-consciousness-bantu-stephen-biko-december-1971-south-africa">black consciousness movement</a> associated with Steve Biko, </p></li>
<li><p>the emergence of a strong feminist movement, </p></li>
<li><p>the creation of a powerful workers’ movement with an emphasis on the primacy of the working class, and</p></li>
<li><p>a surprising outcome of the national democratic struggle - a “liberal” constitution. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>But in spite of these new ideologies and movements, there is a great deal of continuity with past political traditions. Two examples illustrate this process of continuity and rupture. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=711&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=711&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=711&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=894&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=894&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187788/original/file-20170927-24149-mpv4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=894&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness Movement.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first one is the championing of ethnic nationalism and the endorsement of traditional <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-7">Bantustan</a> leaders after 1994. </p>
<p>We introduce the idea of the ethnic nation in the book through a chapter by Dunbar Moodie. He examines the debates that took place in the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03190.htm">Afrikaner Broederbond</a>. These show how liberal Afrikaner nationalist intellectuals, such as <a href="http://www.tafelberg.com/authors/330">NP Van Wyk Louw</a>, argued that Afrikaners cannot deny Africans what they claim for themselves, namely the right to self determination. Hence apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd envisioned the idea of the Bantustans culminating in a federation of “independent ethnic nations” in southern Africa.</p>
<p>The chiefs and tribal authorities that were created by apartheid were authoritarian, deeply undemocratic, and often corrupt. Yet they survived into the post-apartheid era. </p>
<p>The second example is the constitution and its Bill of Rights. There are those who believe that these rights, especially the socio-economic rights, such as the right to education and housing, provide the key to resolving the National Question.</p>
<p>Indeed, Jeremy Cronin and Alex Mashile, from the SACP, argue that under Thabo Mbeki the National Question was reduced to the deracialisation of monopoly capitalism. The goal of the national democratic revolution became the consolidation of a capitalist democracy by opening up South Africa to global markets and promoting a black capitalist class.</p>
<h2>Resolving the National Question</h2>
<p>What became clear in our conversations about the book that the National Question cannot be resolved solely through the country’s constitution. Much as it contains the potential for a far more radical transformative project than traditional liberalism, it cannot resolve the National Question.</p>
<p>The resolution of the National Question will require the resolution of what has been called the “social question”. This is a historic demand for the redistribution of wealth and the right of all citizens to education, health and welfare. Without addressing the legacy of land dispossession, economic exclusion, long term unemployment and racialised inequality, the National Question will remain unresolved.</p>
<p><em>The article is drawn from a recently published volume of research based essays titled <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-unresolved-national-question-in-south-africa/">The Unresolved National Question: left thought under apartheid</a>. It was edited by Edward Webster and Karin Pampallis and published by Wits University Press</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Webster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The National Question cannot be resolved solely through South Africa's constitution. There's potential for a far more radical transformative project than traditional liberalism.Edward Webster, Professor Emeritus, Society, Work and Development Institute, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/802492017-08-02T13:14:05Z2017-08-02T13:14:05ZVenezuela: what Chávez's mentor told me about the country's Castro-inspired road to ruin<p>Even as citizens took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands to protest and boycott it, Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40772531">declared victory</a> in an election that could allow him to rewrite the country’s constitution. The result, which elevates hundreds of representatives to Maduro’s <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/07/venezuela-maduro-constituent-assembly-170729172525718.html">constituent assembly</a>, is highly contentious. The government claims that 8m, or <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/31/americas/venezuela-constituent-assembly-election/index.html">41.53%</a> of eligible voters, turned out, but the opposition claims that only 2.2m, or <a href="http://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/mundo/america-latina/venezuela-es/article164479802.html">less than 15%</a>, actually did.</p>
<p>Luisa Ortega, the once-loyal attorney general turned government critic, <a href="http://runrun.es/nacional/319774/las-20-mejores-frases-de-la-fiscal-general-despues-de-la-eleccion-constituyente.html">said</a> the result “makes a mockery” of the country, offering “too much power for a very small group.” The government also faces international condemnation, with <a href="http://runrun.es/nacional/319659/mas-de-40-paises-estan-en-contra-de-la-constituyente.html">more than 40 countries</a> speaking out against the constituent assembly. </p>
<p>The proposals, such as they are, are a sham. Maduro claims that his plans will bring peace to Venezuela, but hasn’t explained what specific elements of the 1999 constitution need changing. Under a new constitution, the opposition’s ongoing efforts to challenge Maduro would be rendered moot; the current parliament, with its opposition majority, could even be dissolved, or reduced to a rubber stamp for the president’s orders. </p>
<p>This would complete Venezuela’s transition from democracy to a system more closely resembling the Castros’ Cuba. That particular country and its ways of doing politics have long been an inspiration for Venezuela’s leftist leaders – to their country’s severe detriment. </p>
<h2>A shrine of the revolution</h2>
<p>As I was gathering material for my research back in 2007 and 2009, I twice interviewed a figure who saw this process play out: Hugo Chávez’s onetime political broker and mentor, <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12803">Luis Miquilena</a>.</p>
<p>Miquilena, who was actively involved in Venezuelan politics from the 1940s until his death in 2016, put Chávez up at his house after he was <a href="https://videosenglish.telesurtv.net/video/365779/looking-back-chavez-released-from-yare-prison-1994/">released from prison</a> in 1994. When we spoke, Miquilena described the many long nights they spent talking about the problems in the country and how to improve it once in government; “Chávez,” he said, “was like my adopted son.” But he didn’t see his protégé as a great white hope. Far from it: “Once you know Chávez well, you realise that he is not presidential material.”</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Miquilena seriously invested in Chávez, hoping to transform Venezuela from behind the scenes. The “Chávismo” phenomenon that’s held sway in Venezuela for the last two decades would have never materialised without his contacts, endeavour and political wit. It was Miquilena who assembled an impressive coalition of small and medium-sized political parties and influential figures to support Chávez’s successful <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9812/06/venezuela.results/index.html">1998 presidential bid</a>.</p>
<p>But Miquelena’s plan to rule by proxy a <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X14521991">passive revolution</a> didn’t come off. His almost fatherly bond with Chávez soon began to fray, and he soon found himself sidelined by another ideological heavyweight. </p>
<p>In October 2000, Fidel Castro himself visited Venezuela and insisted on visiting the house in Sabaneta where Chávez was born and lived during his childhood. According to Miquilena, when they got there, Fidel told Chávez: “We’ll make this house a shrine of the revolution” – and starting then, Chávez began distancing himself from Miquilena as Fidel inflated him with messianic delusions of grandeur. Feeling used and betrayed, Miquilena resigned his government post in January 2002 and ended his relationship with Chávez.</p>
<h2>Push and shove</h2>
<p>Thus began Venezuela’s Fidelist radicalisation. Chávez’s charisma and gift of the gab thrilled people who felt ignored and marginalised in a polarised society; after a coup against him <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/15/venezuela.alexbellos">failed in 2002</a>, he cemented his position with the benefit of abundant petrodollars. Nevertheless, Chávez’s dominant alpha male persona was not enough to guarantee electoral success, and his incendiary rhetoric was increasingly matched with efforts to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-venezuelas-revolutionary-dream-descended-into-chaos-75685">tweak the system in his favour</a>.</p>
<p>The undemocratic and bloody events Venezuela has seen in recent months have their roots in Chávez’s decision to gradually impose a Cuban-style socialist revolution at all costs. As he <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-salute-idUSN1142580120070511">famously said</a> in 2007: “Homeland, socialism or death … I swear!”</p>
<p>Today, it seems that the idea of revolution is to be defended at all costs, including violence, even at the highest levels. On June 28, 2017, Bladimiro Lugo, a colonel of the National Guard responsible for the safety of parliament and parliamentarians, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p52dQ5KD978">manhandled and shoved</a> Julio Borges, president of the opposition-led National Assembly. This occurred as Borges asked Lugo to explain the physical attacks opposition female parliamentarians and journalists had suffered earlier that day. The next day, Maduro <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfy794SVz5M">awarded Lugo a presidential honour</a> for his contribution to safety and public order. </p>
<p>The incident illustrates a grubby way of maintaining power: the armed forces are kept loyal with the benefits, influence and even impunity that come with promotion, as the government flatters personal interests to make sure military leaders will defend the revolution at all costs. This might explain why Venezuela has <a href="https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2017/06/272001.htm">more active military generals</a> than the NATO alliance countries combined: it now boasts <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-06/venezuela-s-military-needs-to-get-out-of-business">more than 4,000 generals</a>, up from fewer than 50 in 1993. </p>
<p>To make things more complex, the government also provides weapons and political power to civilian groups. Known as the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-protests-colectivos-idUSBREA1C1YW20140213">Colectivos</a>, they play a key role in crushing any protests against the government. On July 5, Lugo’s National Guard which is responsible to safeguard the National Assembly – opened the gates to let <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-latin-america-40511146/mob-storms-venezuela-national-assembly">Colectivos</a> into the building to attack opposition parliamentarians. These events tally with a <a href="https://youtu.be/X_nn2H_uuzI">belligerent speech</a> Maduro delivered on June 27, 2017: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If the Bolivarian revolution is destroyed, we will go to combat, we will never surrender. What couldn’t be done with votes, we will do with weapons.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Fall from grace</h2>
<p>Many on the Latin American left are clear-eyed about what has happened to a country once regarded as a beacon of hope. One particularly interesting and visible <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiiDsc3XT8k">critic</a> is Jose Mujica, ex-president of Uruguay. A left-guerrilla who spent altogether 13 years in prison, turned down an offer of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-29946977">US$1m</a> from a Arab sheikh for his VW Beetle and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243493">donated 90%</a> of his presidential salary to charity organisations, he is as sanguine about what’s happened to Venezuela as many of Chávez and Maduro’s western detractors. </p>
<p>In the 2015 book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Una-oveja-negra-poder-Confesiones-ebook/dp/B00XZA2LD6">A Black Sheep in Power</a> (Una Oveja Negra en el Poder), Mujica claims he warned Chávez that “he was not going to construct socialism” and that in the end, “he didn’t construct a damn thing.” Mujica also notes that “Cuba was like a teenage girlfriend that he saw deteriorating as years went by.” Apparently, Mujica never believed in the Cuban model: “In spite of all the crap related with capitalism, it manages to bring growth.”</p>
<p>Having taken the path it did, Venezuela is now a political disaster for the global left. The impact of more than a decade of apparent anti-neoliberal policies in an oil-rich Latin American country has given a bad name to ideological alternatives to free-market doctrines, and puts socialists who respect and follow democratic processes throughout the world in a very awkward position. Chávez and his successors’ gross overuse of the word “socialism” is more than partly to blame. </p>
<p>The government they have built over the years is not populist or socialist: it is totalitarian. It can no longer claim to be democratic, or that it’s primarily occupied with improving the lives of ordinary people. Its principal goal, to the near-exclusion of all others, is to safeguard the elite – even as that elite fails to rescue the country from crisis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80249/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Brading does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Venezuela is long gone; say hello to Cuba-zuela.Ryan Brading, Teaching Fellow, Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/817132017-07-31T15:41:59Z2017-07-31T15:41:59ZWhat's in a name? Towards genuine economic transformation in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180170/original/file-20170728-23788-qc9ppz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">&#39;Radical economic transformation&#39; in South Africa needs to move beyond rhetoric.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Ryan McFarland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>While much froth and babble has accompanied the debate over <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-07-02-00-lets-embrace-radical-economic-transformation">“Radical Economic Transformation”</a> in South Africa, the bottom line remains: the country urgently needs <em>real</em> economic transformation. Calling it “radical” is to invite politicking and <a href="https://blackopinion.co.za/2017/07/26/floyd-shivambu-jeremy-cronin-two-sides-anti-black-coin/">point-scoring</a> and take our eyes off the ball – the need for real economic transformation.</p>
<p>How far South Africa has moved in altering the economic landscape is open to debate. It certainly has moved, but how far, and at what point will monopolistic tendencies <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/monopoly-capital">be challenged</a>?</p>
<p>While much has <a href="https://www.idc.co.za/reports/IDC%20R&amp;I%20publication%20-%20Overview%20of%20key%20trends%20in%20SA%20economy%20since%201994.pdf">been achieved</a> in many areas – meeting basic needs for example – there’s still an enormous distance to travel, and impatience is growing.</p>
<p>For the democratic period, economic growth has been singularly anaemic. Unemployment has been <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/south-africa/unemployment-rate">rising consistently</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-needs-to-fix-its-dangerously-wide-wealth-gap-66355">income inequality</a> has worsened. This despite a plethora of policy documents, the most recent being the <a href="http://www.gov.za/ISSUES/NATIONAL-DEVELOPMENT-PLAN-2030">National Development Plan</a>.</p>
<p>However, the real causes of the economic crisis are obscured by the current <a href="http://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/">political crisis</a>. It has allowed mainstream economists to reinforce the call for <a href="http://www.thenewage.co.za/fiscal-discipline-vital-for-economic-growth-economist/">“fiscal discipline”</a> as if that were the only factor stifling growth and development.</p>
<p>In business and government, economic policy is reduced to the maintenance of macroeconomic stability. Fiscal discipline is an important precondition for economic growth, but not a sufficient condition.</p>
<p>We must ask: who is in charge of economic policy? </p>
<h2>Driving economic policy</h2>
<p>Radical economic transformation suggests, at the bare minimum, that government must take charge of economic policy, including macroeconomic policy, so that the country’s real development needs can be addressed.</p>
<p>It’s correctly noted in the National Development Plan that the country’s economy needs to grow at a much faster rate, 6% at least, to begin to address its socioeconomic challenges, high unemployment, inequality and poverty. The current growth trajectory, measuring 2-3% over the <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/south-africa/gdp-growth">past 20 years</a> is just not enough. It will not deliver inclusive growth to address the challenges. Rather, it will merely accentuate inequalities in the country. </p>
<p>And, if sustained, the prevailing recession spells disaster. Serious transformation is required.</p>
<p>If radical economic transformation is to serve the needs of the bottom 60% of the population, it needs to move beyond the catchy political slogans of <a href="http://www.biznews.com/asset-management/2017/04/17/nationalise-gigaba/">nationalising land, banks and mines</a>, and <a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/anti-white-monopoly-capital-propaganda-will-lead-sa-to-ruin-telkom-chairman/">“kicking out” whites</a>. It requires a rigorous analysis of why economic and social policy have not delivered growth and development.</p>
<p>There seems to be consensus that the country needs industrial development. It is largely considered the solution to overcoming commodity dependence. However, there is no consensus on who must drive it - the private sector or a strong “developmental state”?</p>
<p>South Africa has to find the right balance between the power of market forces and private initiative on the one hand, and the obligation of governments to provide an enabling framework and to intervene in favour of the public interest on the other.</p>
<p>In spite of being a late starter on industrial policy, considerable progress has been made; but much more can be done with increased funding for growth in and greater diversification of manufacturing.</p>
<h2>Combating monopolies</h2>
<p>Almost everyone agrees that small business has to be a critical component of any development strategy. But the sector has been characterised by a singular lack of success. The country needs to ask why.</p>
<p>One reason is the domination of markets and exploitation of the small business sector by big business. The history of large supermarkets and their ruthless <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2017-06-23-suppliers-at-a-huge-disadvantage-when-dealing-with-supermarkets/">exploitation of small suppliers</a> tell the story of the highly unequal and exploitative relationship that exists in virtually all sectors of the economy. What is government doing to ensure that small business can survive in the monopolistic environment which characterises contemporary South African capitalism?</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180172/original/file-20170728-18243-j9g2lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180172/original/file-20170728-18243-j9g2lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=600&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180172/original/file-20170728-18243-j9g2lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=600&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180172/original/file-20170728-18243-j9g2lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=600&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180172/original/file-20170728-18243-j9g2lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=754&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180172/original/file-20170728-18243-j9g2lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=754&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180172/original/file-20170728-18243-j9g2lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=754&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Predatory tendencies of conglomerates stifle township businesses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Anne-Sophie Leens</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.dti.gov.za/economic_empowerment/bee.jsp">“Black economic empowerment”</a> needs to progress beyond an elite few who are closely linked to the ruling party. Sectors such as tourism - overwhelmingly white-owned - offer opportunities for creative thinking about new, broadly beneficial forms of ownership.</p>
<p>And real black economic empowerment is clearly linked to the question of <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-10-point-plan-to-accelerate-orderly-land-reform-in-south-africa-80841">land reform</a>. The country needs to break up monopolistic ownership, but also to ensure that land is used productively.</p>
<h2>Developmental state</h2>
<p>Given the current political climate, there’s a great deal of scepticism about the potential of the developmental state. This comes on the back of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/corrupt-state-owned-enterprises-lie-at-the-heart-of-south-africas-economic-woes-79135">pervasive governance crises</a> afflicting parastatals such as, among others, the power utility Eskom and South African Airways. </p>
<p>However, there is no alternative to the developmental state. The country cannot leave economic development to the private sector, whose immense wealth has been built on its version of the free market and exploitation of cheap labour.</p>
<p>But for the developmental state to be effective, it has to be competent. There are numerous global examples of success in this area that can be followed. But is South Africa learning from them?</p>
<p>Building the developmental state does not imply a return to “yesterday’s socialism” of state control of the means of production. Rather, the country should focus on an appropriate mix of roles, with the state as the driver of development coupled with truly competitive markets producing goods and services.</p>
<h2>Driving fundamental economic change</h2>
<p>Clearly, fundamental economic change is required, and soon. But saying so, and achieving it, are very different. South Africans must separate the current political noise around radical economic transformation from the basic fact that business as usual is not an option. A lot has to change, and fast.</p>
<p>Going back to the tenets of quasi-socialism of the 1950s – nationalisation of mines and banks, land seizures and so on – are not “radical” in the <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/opinion/how-to-break-monopoly-white-capital-8779291">21st century economy</a>.</p>
<p>It follows to then ask if and how the country can jump from the current state of <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-in-a-recession-heres-what-that-means-78953">recession</a> to radical economic transformation – ensuring that the “radical” equates with positive outcomes for the poor, not for existing or new elites? Which “radical” elements can help make that leap?</p>
<p>The global economy is going through its own radical transformation, as blue collar and white collar jobs are giving way to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-automated-future-new-collar-jobs-2017-1">“new collar” jobs</a>.</p>
<p>The world is looking at single digit economic growth, and the workplace is undergoing dramatic transformation. Those propagating radical economic transformation must explain how it fits into the broader global change.</p>
<p>It has been a hallmark of the ANC government – from the time of the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02103/05lv02120/06lv02126.htm">Reconstruction and Development Programme</a> - to see economic growth as the driving force for change across society. That programme suggested that by meeting basic needs – such as clean water, housing and sanitation – much of the damage of apartheid would be dealt with and dignity restored. Economic growth would harness the energies of the “healed” black population and a positive future would flow seamlessly. </p>
<p>This was wishful thinking. The damage done to all people by racist violence and apartheid will take far more than economic growth to repair. Radical social transformation is needed.</p>
<p>There are other key elements which must be dealt with to realise inclusive growth. Fixing the <a href="http://www.gcro.ac.za/outputs/map-of-the-month/detail/proximity-of-rdp-housing-in-relation-to-major-economic-centres/">spatial landscape</a> is one of them. Apartheid deliberately separated “races” into different spaces, divided by natural or man-made barriers. The economy - even a radically transformed one – won’t change this. </p>
<p>A truly “radical” vision would have to encompass all these aspects of change, and specify them in detail.</p>
<p><em>Article adapted from a position paper delivered at the OR Tambo Debate on radical economic transformation recently held at Wits School of Governance.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Wits School of Governance receives funding from donor organisations.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pundy Pillay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africa's governing ANC has always seen economic growth as the driving force for change. This was wishful thinking as the damage done by apartheid will take far more to undo.Pundy Pillay, Professor of Economics and Public Finance, School of Governance, University of the WitwatersrandDavid Everatt, Head of Wits School of Governance, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/812422017-07-28T05:46:58Z2017-07-28T05:46:58ZCastro's conundrum: finding a post-communist model Cuba can follow<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179809/original/file-20170726-2676-1q8xnpb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Cuba, unlike in many Latin American countries, when you see children on the street, they&#39;re not begging; they&#39;re playing. And therein lies Castro&#39;s dilemma: how to reform Cuba&#39;s stagnant economy without losing what&#39;s working?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/HAaxKZ">Dan Lundberg/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When US President Donald Trump <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/politics/trump-cuba-policy/index.html">imposed new restrictions on Cuba</a> in June 2017, he professed his administration’s aim was to “encourage greater freedom for the Cuban people and economic interaction”.</p>
<p>Raúl Castro, who took over from his brother Fidel in 2008, has been trying to <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-cuba-the-post-fidel-era-began-ten-years-ago-71720">figure out that last part for years</a>. In 2010, Castro spoke of the need to “<a href="http://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/mundo/america-latina/cuba-es/article139985523.html">update the economic model</a>”, but the world has regrettably few models for a communist country in transition can follow.</p>
<p>As Rafael Hernandez, editor of the Cuban journal <a href="http://www.temas.cult.cu/">Temas</a>, informed America’s <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/08/21/159466378/cuba-views-china-vietnam-as-economic-hope">National Public Radio</a> in 2012, “a new model for Cuba is still taking shape, but it would be foolish for the island to try copying China or Vietnam”. </p>
<p>In both of these countries, but particularly in China, the transition to a market economy in recent decades has created <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-13945072">gross economic inequality</a> and come at a <a href="https://www.internationalrivers.org/campaigns/three-gorges-dam">high social cost</a>. Such outcomes would be unacceptable in Cuba, where <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-donald-trump-change-cuba-79734">the revolutionary spirit of egalitarianism lives on</a>.</p>
<h2>Cuba’s <em>cuentapropistas</em></h2>
<p>In the meantime, Castro is giving Cuba’s <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/11/26/fidel-castros-economic-disaster-in-cuba/#563ca56f6b65">stagnant economy</a> a cash injection by pursuing a simple premise: maintain state control of the economy but give the private sector more room for manoeuvre. </p>
<p>At the March 2011 <a href="http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/documentos/2011/ing/l160711i.html">Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party</a>, Castro spearheaded the approval of 300 historic measures to unlock the country’s entrepreneurial spirit, including reducing public sector jobs, decentralising the state apparatus and encouraging self-employment.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=401&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=401&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=401&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=504&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=504&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179505/original/file-20170724-16930-xx41zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=504&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rickshaw drivers are among Cuba’s burgeoning self-employed class.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antonio Castillo</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After a half-century of prohibition on where and how they could earn money, Cubans jumped at the opportunity to start their own small businesses. </p>
<p>Ramiro is one of them. “It was unbelievable, I took more than a hundred photos of Obama,” he told me on a crisp April afternoon while walking along the Malecón, the eight-kilometre esplanade along Havana’s north coast. </p>
<p>Barack Obama and his family landed at José Martí international airport in March 2016, the first US president to set foot on the island since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. </p>
<p>Ramiro, who sells <em>churros</em> in touristy Old Havana, is also a freelance photographer, and he followed the Obamas around the city, documenting their stay.</p>
<p>“Look at this one,” he said, showing me an image of the former president entering a restaurant with his wife and two daughters. “This is Obama when he went to have dinner at San Cristobal”, one of Cuba’s top-rated <em>paladares</em>, or private eateries. </p>
<p>“You should try the food there, you know Mick Jagger ate there, too?” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=399&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=501&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=501&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179508/original/file-20170724-7881-th6vxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=501&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tourism is the engine that fuels Havana’s upscale private eateries, called <em>paladares</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">advencap/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The tourist engine</h2>
<p>Ramiro’s recommendation is tongue-in-cheek: I can’t afford San Cristobal and he knows it.</p>
<p>Happily, there are more affordable options among Havana’s 1,700 <em>paladares</em>. These in-home restaurants are part of the new economic model that encourages <em>cuentapropismo</em>, or self-employment, in Cuba. </p>
<p>By the end of 2016, there were more than 535,000 <em>cuentrapropistas</em> on the <a href="https://www.martinoticias.com/a/cuba-mas-medio-millon-cuentapropistas-cifras-oficiales/136867.html">island</a>. Self-employment now represents 26% of non-state employment, and it is projected to rise to 35%. </p>
<p>Other than owning a <em>paladar</em>, Cuban entrepreneurs may now legally engage in 202 other private activities, including being an electrician, animal trainer, gardener, hairdresser, street vendor and rickshaw driver.</p>
<p>Tourism is the engine of this change. According to Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism, more than <a href="http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2017/07/12/ministro-del-turismo-cuba-proyecta-cerrar-el-ano-con-cuatro-millones-700-mil-turistas/#.WXe4jNOGNPM">4 million tourists are expected to land on the island in 2017</a>.</p>
<p>US tourism has long been banned here, even under Barack Obama, so Americans must seek one of 12 specific licences to avoid <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/pages/cuba.aspx">violating US sanctions against Cuba</a>.</p>
<p>Lester and Laura, a Catholic couple in their 60s, told me that they “came in under the religious activities” license, citing one reason Americans can <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/how-to-travel-to-cuba_n_6489024">get authorisation to travel Cuba</a>.</p>
<p>Both schoolteachers, Lester and Laura were staying in an affordable <em>casa particular</em> (private home) on Old Havana’s Plaza Vieja. Like the <em>paladares</em>, these bed and breakfast-style accommodations are part of the <em>cuentapropista</em> economic plan.</p>
<p>The average host makes US$250 per booking, <a href="http://fortune.com/cuba-havana-airbnb/">according to Fortune magazine</a> – good money in a country where the average monthly salary is US$23. Business is clearly booming.</p>
<div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props='{"tweetId":"872035360896933888"}'></div>
<p>Jaime and Mario, the owners of the <em>casa particular</em> hosting Lester and Laura, have impeccably renovated the fourth floor of their six-floor apartment building, splitting it into two self-contained bedrooms. </p>
<p>They’d like to add a third, they told me, but navigating Cuban bureaucracy is as slow as dancing <em>merengue</em>. Approval to expand will take months.</p>
<h2>An equitable society</h2>
<p>Fidel Castro, who died in 2016 at the age of 90, remains a revered figure among Cubans. He is buried 800 kilometres from Havana, in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/04/fidel-castro-funeral-ashes-interred-cuba-cemetery">the Santa Ifigenia cemetery</a> in Santiago de Cuba, the birthplace of the Cuban revolution.</p>
<p>Don Raúl, a <em>Santiagueño</em> engineer who drives an unpainted 1954 Chevrolet, met me at the cemetery on one of those steamy, scorching Santiago mornings. He directed me to Fidel’s tomb (“Walk to the entry and then turn left”). </p>
<p>Fidel’s ashes are encased under a bulky granite boulder bearing a minimalist dark plaque engraved with just his first name. To pay respects to the legendary <em>comandante</em>, just as with so many things in Cuba from buying coffee to accessing the internet, one must queue.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=401&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=401&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=401&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=504&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=504&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179506/original/file-20170724-7881-3i7jtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=504&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fidel Castro remains a hero for many Cubans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antonio Castillo</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Without Fidel we are heading to an unequal society,” Don Raúl told me. He is suspicious of <em>cuentapropismo</em>, which enriches some and leaves others out. “It’s not good.” </p>
<p>He doesn’t consider himself an entrepreneur. “I’m just a driver,” he said. </p>
<p>Don Raul, who still gets emotional when he speaks of Fidel, worries that <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-castro-diaz-canel-idUSKBN13P0FC">Miguel Díaz-Canel</a>, Raúl Castro’s designated successor, will push Cuba to become a “US-style country” when he takes the reins in 2018. </p>
<p>A girl, perhaps ten years old, leaves a bunch of red roses at Fidel’s tomb. </p>
<p>“He was a friend,” she told me. “He fought for the country and for the education of children.” </p>
<p>She’s onto something. Unlike elsewhere in Latin America, kids in Cuba don’t beg or sell candy on the streets. Education levels <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/salim-lamrani/world-bank-cuba-has-the-b_b_5925864.html">rival those of the developed world</a> and <a href="https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/Progress_for_Children_-_No._4.pdf">childhood malnutrition</a> is almost nonexistent. </p>
<p>These are key indicators of human development. Even in bad times, Cuba has been an equitable society. And herein lies the existential dilemma facing Castro (and, soon enough, Díaz-Canal): Cuba is poor, but it has also avoided many of the maladies facing its neighbours. </p>
<p>Raul Castro has described his vision for the country as “prosperous and sustainable socialism”. Now he just has to figure out what that looks like.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81242/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Antonio Castillo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cuba won't tolerate the high social costs paid by China and Vietnam in their shift to market capitalism, but its economy desperately needs a reboot.Antonio Castillo, Director, Centre for Communication, Politics and Culture, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/778012017-05-16T11:39:11Z2017-05-16T11:39:11ZLabour's manifesto shows it is the true party of workers' rights<p>It cannot be an accident that Jeremy Corbyn launched what may be his one and only general election manifesto in the city of Bradford. One of the forerunners of today’s Corbyn-led Labour Party was the Independent Labour Party (ILP). It was a full-blooded left wing party, <a href="http://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/2011/11/03/ilp-history-beginnings-in-bradford/">founded in 1893 in Bradford</a>. And, Keir Hardie, the ILP’s first leader and founder of the Labour Party, has frequently been cited by Corbyn <a href="http://jeremycorbyn.org.uk/articles/jeremy-corbyn-keir-hardie-memorial-lecture/">as one of his inspirations</a>. </p>
<p>Both Hardie and the ILP were very strong advocates of workers’ rights, having emerged from the then nascent union movement. Corbyn, a former full-time officer of one of the forerunner’s of the biggest union in Britain, <a href="https://www.unison.org.uk/">UNISON</a>, is equally a very strong advocate of workers’ rights. This shows up in the publication today of Labour’s general election manifesto.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169519/original/file-20170516-11945-9i8v2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169519/original/file-20170516-11945-9i8v2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=792&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169519/original/file-20170516-11945-9i8v2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=792&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169519/original/file-20170516-11945-9i8v2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=792&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169519/original/file-20170516-11945-9i8v2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=996&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169519/original/file-20170516-11945-9i8v2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=996&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169519/original/file-20170516-11945-9i8v2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=996&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Keir Hardie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AKeir_Hardie_LOC_ggbain_01224.jpg">US Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the Conservatives trying to muscle in on traditional Labour territory by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/15/are-tories-workers-party-labour-polling-figures-suggest-they-are">painting themselves as the party of workers</a>, it’s worth taking a closer look to see which party truly represents workers. </p>
<p>Among the most significant of the pledges in the <a href="http://www.labour.org.uk/index.php/manifesto2017/fair-deal-at-work">manifesto on rights at work</a> are:</p>
<ul>
<li>All workers equal rights from day one, whether part-time or full-time<br></li>
<li>Banning zero hours contracts so that every worker gets a guaranteed number of hours each week<br></li>
<li>Ending the use of overseas labour to undercut domestic wages and conditions</li>
<li>Repealing the Trade Union Act 2016 and rolling out collective bargaining by sector<br></li>
<li>Guaranteeing unions a right to access workplaces to represent members<br></li>
<li>Raising the minimum wage to the level of the living wage<br></li>
<li>Ending the public sector pay cap<br></li>
<li>Instituting a maximum pay ratio of 20:1 in the public sector and companies bidding for public contracts<br></li>
<li>Banning unpaid internships<br></li>
<li>Abolishing employment tribunal fees<br></li>
<li>Giving self-employed workers the status of workers<br></li>
<li>Setting up a commission to modernise the law around employment status<br></li>
<li>Creating a Ministry of Labour with the resources to enforce workers’ rights<br></li>
</ul>
<p>These pledges are essentially a replication of A Manifesto for Labour Law <a href="https://issuu.com/instituteofemploymentrights/docs/preview_a_manifesto_for_labour_law">by the Institute of Employment Rights</a> in June 2016, devised in conjunction with labour law academics to promote healthy policy for workers.</p>
<h2>Labour’s worker problem</h2>
<p>The socialist left <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/40491/Labours+betrayals+let+Tories+back+in">has often argued</a> that Labour has failed to inspire the loyalty of workers, and union members especially, by being insufficiently radical. Consequently, the argument goes, there was less than a compelling reason to vote for Labour. Along with pledges to bring the water industry, railways, Royal Mail and some energy companies back into public ownership (which should reduce pressure on workers’ wages and conditions), this cannot be said to be the case this time round. </p>
<p>Some have criticised Corbyn’s Labour for giving into the allegedly vested and backward interest of unions. As Martin Kettle of the Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/11/labour-manifesto-ideas-right-state-role">argued</a>, “union power is not the same as workers’ rights”.</p>
<p>At one level, this is a valid point. With only around a quarter of workers <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/525938/Trade_Union_Membership_2015_-_Statistical_Bulletin.pdf">now holding union membership</a>, workers cannot rely on unions any time soon to be able to effectively defend their rights and interests. </p>
<p>But when one recognises that the implementation of workers’ rights has <a href="https://books.google.es/books/about/Union_Organizing.html?id=R8E2E-NxvfcC&amp;redir_esc=y">always needed the help of unions</a> because they are the only sizeable independent organisations with the resources to do so, this point loses its force. Unions inform workers of their rights and help them apply them. Plus, unions have always helped more than just their members because employers apply the gains of union negotiated deals to all employees. </p>
<h2>Wider significance</h2>
<p>But focusing on the union aspect blinds critics to the actual significance of Labour’s manifesto. This is that, compared to what the Tories are proposing, Labour prioritises collective rights over individual rights so that workers can act together to advance their interests. Labour’s manifesto recognises that the workers are stronger together, echoing a fundamental belief of Karl Marx that the condition of the freedom of the individual is the <a href="https://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2004/Kim.pdf">condition of the freedom of all</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, without collective rights in law, especially with regard to the right to strike, any collective bargaining can easily end up being <a href="http://www.tradeunionfreedom.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Kill-the-Bill-Final.pdf">merely collective begging</a>.</p>
<p>The most obvious case in point concerns the right to sectoral collective bargaining, which Labour has emphasised in its manifesto. In Britain, companies in the same sector compete primarily against each other on the basis of their labour costs. Hence, there is a competitive advantage to cut wages and conditions as the principle route to profitability. </p>
<p>But by providing a statutory basis to sectoral collective bargaining, all companies in a sector would be compelled to furnish workers with the same minimum terms and conditions. No longer would they compete on labour costs in a “race to the bottom”. And, their attention would turn to improving productivity through investment in technology and training. </p>
<p>With stronger collective rights, applied and enforced with the help of unions, both unions and workers’ rights would be immeasurably strengthened. Time will shortly tell whether Labour’s manifesto will help it regain the support of working class voters. Or whether Theresa May’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/15/are-tories-workers-party-labour-polling-figures-suggest-they-are">pitch</a> to be the workers’ friend will gain sufficient traction. </p>
<p>If Corbyn is successful, it will be a fitting tribute to the heritage of Bradford. It was here that an almighty 19-week strike at the city’s Manningham Mills textile factory by some 5,000 workers over wage cuts in 1891 gave a big spur <a href="http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/11928">to the founding of the ILP</a>. It will also have been fitting that Labour launched the manifesto at the University of Bradford given that it started out life in 1832 as the <a href="http://www.bradford.ac.uk/news/university-in-profile/history-and-the-university/">Bradford Mechanics Institute</a>, an organisation designed to help working class people gain the necessary skills for the ever changing world of work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77801/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregor Gall is editor of the Scottish Left Review magazine and director of the Jimmy Reid Foundation.</span></em></p>With the Conservatives trying to muscle in on traditional Labour territory by painting themselves as the party of workers, it's worth taking a closer look at their promises.Gregor Gall, Professor of Industrial Relations, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/764792017-04-26T11:51:13Z2017-04-26T11:51:13ZThe Labour Party must embrace a hard, socialist Brexit to stand a chance of winning the general election<p>The electoral success of a political party depends on many factors. But the most important one is the correct reading of domestic developments and how they are connected to global economic and political trends. Parties must understand both of these environments when developing their campaign strategies.</p>
<p>The British economy is characterised by the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/2ce78f36-ed2e-11e5-888e-2eadd5fbc4a4">dominance of financial services</a> and the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/df218f48-9d3c-11e2-a8db-00144feabdc0">crisis of the welfare state</a>. Underpinning this has been 40 years of neoliberal British government policy, promoting privatisation, deregulation and competition. The manufacturing sector has shrunk to just <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/manufacturingandproductionindustry">11% of GDP</a>. </p>
<p>An economy dominated by services has remodelled the country’s entire social and economic life. It has increased inequality – substantially reducing wages for low-paid workers and promoted flexible and precarious employment. Meanwhile, budgets for public provision and investment have <a href="https://theconversation.com/state-of-the-nation-a-dismal-record-for-the-uk-economy-39675">been cut</a>. </p>
<p>The leaders of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, and shadow chancellor John McDonnell, have <a href="http://www.labour.org.uk/index.php/10-pledges">captured this domestic reality well</a>. It brought the party closer to people and increased its membership <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/explaining-the-pro-corbyn-surge-in-labours-membership/">massively</a>. Polls in February 2016 showed the party to be <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/poll-jeremy-corbyn-labour-tories-voting-intention-general-election-first-time-leader-a6930721.html">neck and neck with the Conservatives</a>. </p>
<p>But things changed in the run-up to the Brexit referendum of June 23 and have gone from bad to worse. When British prime minister, Theresa May, called the snap election on April 18, her party had a lead of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39631792">more than 17 points</a>. This is because the Labour Party has failed to correctly read the “external” environment it finds itself in. This is the disaffection of British society caused by the crisis of globalisation and European integration. </p>
<h2>The new global context</h2>
<p>Finance-led, neoliberal globalisation has undermined the capacity of the nation state to redistribute wealth <a href="https://economicsociologydotorg.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/the-role-of-the-state-in-the-financialisation-of-the-uk-economy.pdf">for all levels of society</a>. Under globalisation, state intervention has consistently favoured private business, financial services and privatisations. </p>
<p>The EU epitomises globalisation in that it transferred to unaccountable, supranational institutions the key public policy instrument of monetary policy. Countries within the eurozone cannot control their currency to make their economies competitive (something Germany has greatly benefited from), <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19448953.2010.510012">resulting in higher debt</a>. It is the poor and the working classes that have suffered as a result.</p>
<p>Since the global financial crisis, however, the global political economy has structurally drifted towards a new protectionism. There has been a <a href="https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/mb200903_focus01.en.pdf">contraction of global trade</a>; the rise of <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/2dd0ecc4-3768-11e6-a780-b48ed7b6126f">various trade barriers</a>; and a <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/international/21709019-flow-africans-libya-italy-now-europes-worst-migration-crisis-travelling">resurgence of nationalist movements</a> that often <a href="https://theconversation.com/blame-austerity-not-immigration-for-taking-britain-to-breaking-point-61133">blame immigrants</a> for their country’s problems. </p>
<p>So globalisation and European integration failed the working classes, destroying the jobs and security that many previously relied on. The subsequent crisis then failed them further, with austerity making their economic and social situation even worse.</p>
<h2>Capturing the mood</h2>
<p>The conservative establishment in the US captured this trend quite well. Trump snatched the initiative from the Democrats to win the presidency by reaching out <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-class-and-the-rise-of-china-won-trump-the-white-house-69515">to disenfranchised working class voters</a>. </p>
<p>In the UK, both the Conservatives and the Labour Party made the strategic mistake of ignoring these global and societal trends and the degree to which they affect people’s daily lives. Thus, both parties’ official stance in the build-up to the Brexit referendum was to align themselves on a pro-European platform against British society. They lost. </p>
<p>Since then, Theresa May has corrected her party’s mistake by waving the banner of a “hard Brexit” and calling a snap election to reinforce her leadership ahead of Brexit negotiations. The Labour Party must respond to this smart move in kind.</p>
<p>Many Remain supporters hope that Labour will stand up against hard Brexit and adopt a pro-EU strategy, even launching a campaign <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/19/gina-miller-best-for-britain-tactical-voting-against-hard-brexit">to this effect</a>. But this is more likely to benefit the Liberal Democrats, which is the clear pro-EU party. It is also a party without any solid critical positions against the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/aug/16/lib-dem-rebels-nick-clegg-repeal-nhs-reforms">dismantling of the NHS and privatisation policies</a>. </p>
<p>A victorious campaign for Labour must include a direct and ruthless critique of the <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56330ad3e4b0733dcc0c8495/t/56b13f5240261dd5dfcb8255/1454456659125/GLJ_Vol_14_No_05_Dale.pdf">EU’s authoritarianism</a>. After all, it imposed a set of unbearable austerity measures and cuts that turned the local poor and unemployed against immigrants, who are wrongly believed to be the source of the problem. </p>
<p>Alongside this critique, Labour must pledge to immediately introduce the socialist elements of EU law upon withdrawal – the pro-labour, pro-migration, pro-environmental and pro-human rights legislation. But it can do so within the sovereign site of the British democratic parliamentary system. </p>
<p>So instead of offering lukewarm support for the EU’s human and workers’ rights treaties, a viable UK opposition would embrace a socialist Brexit, all the while instituting and even enhancing the elements of EU law that protect British workers. This way Labour can align with British society against the EU in order to advance British democracy and all those disaffected by the neoliberal policies espoused by the Tory government. </p>
<p>When it comes to accessing the single market, this is not really a matter of debate in Westminster. Access will not be decided in London but in Berlin, the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/7fcb38e8-15f5-11e6-9d98-00386a18e39d">real seat of EU power</a> in this time of crisis. And Germany wants a “hard Brexit” because it cannot break the rules it created <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/19/germany-strong-eu-britain-easy-brexit-angela-merkel">and transplanted across the EU</a>. The Conservative Party appears to recognise this and is ready to give the people the Brexit they want, all the while implementing its right-wing agenda and dismantling the welfare state. </p>
<p>The Labour Party cannot go against the tide of de-globalisation and expect to win. It must adapt its policies to the new constraints and develop its pro-social and pro-working class agenda within them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76479/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vassilis K. Fouskas tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham, atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi di luar afiliasi akademis yang telah disebut di atas.</span></em></p>Labour must develop its pro-social and pro-working class agenda for an electorate that has been failed by globalisation and EU integration.Vassilis K. Fouskas, Professor of International Politics & Economics, University of East LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/751572017-04-04T20:34:32Z2017-04-04T20:34:32ZEcuador's populist electoral victory for Moreno shows erosion of democracy<p>After 10 years in power, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa will step down. </p>
<p>However, political power isn’t falling far from the tree. Correa’s hand-picked successor and former vice president, Lenin Moreno, has declared <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-election-idUSKBN1740F8">victory</a> against liberal banker Guillermo Lasso. The election has calmed fears that Correa might attempt to cling to the office after he changed the constitution in 2015 to allow for his permanent reelection. </p>
<p>However, Moreno’s election lacks legitimacy for about half of the electorate amid allegations of electoral fraud. To make matters worse, he won in an unfair electoral field. Correa and his party, Alianza País, used their power as elected officials to campaign for Moreno. State-controlled media blatantly favored Moreno. His party intimidated the opposition and even used thugs to <a href="http://www.planv.com.ec/historias/politica/el-picnic-correista-contra-lasso-el-futbol-desata-la-polemica-politica">attack Lasso</a>. </p>
<p>They branded Lasso as a corrupt banker who would roll back social policies designed to reduce inequality and bring back the free-market past. He was portrayed as an enemy of the common people, and as a representative of the Latin American right that aimed to reverse social policies that benefited the poor. Correa constructed the election as a vote on the legacies of his administration, and more broadly on the sustainability of a political “left turn” in Latin America.</p>
<p>Other recent elections show evidence of a shift to the right in Latin American politics. For example, the election of President <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-34897150">Mauricio Macri</a> in Argentina, the transfer of power to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/13/michel-temer-brazil-president-rebuild-impeachment">Michel Temer</a> in Brazil and the election of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36459958">Pedro Pablo Kuczynski</a> in Peru.</p>
<p>Lasso was supported by right- and left-wing parties and some social movement leaders who were the victims of Correa’s administration. For Lasso’s supporters, the contest was between Correa’s autocracy and the promise of the liberalization and democratization of Ecuador.</p>
<h2>Rafael Correa’s populism</h2>
<p>Correa was first <a href="http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/ecuador-correas-plebiscitary-presidency">elected</a> in 2006 after running against Ecuador’s political and economic establishment. To reverse privatization and shrinking of the state, he <a href="http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/ecuador-correas-plebiscitary-presidency">strengthened</a> the state and used it to reduce poverty and inequality.</p>
<p>Word Bank data show that the number of people living under the national poverty line in Ecuador was <a href="http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/ECU">reduced</a> from 37.6 percent in 2006 to 23.3 percent in 2015. </p>
<p>Alianza País <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_De_La_Torre7/publication/262093836_El_tecnopopulismo_de_Rafael_Correa_Es_compatible_el_carisma_con_la_tecnocracia/links/579f4d3508ae6a2882f60e95.pdf">wanted</a> to rule until they achieved their long-term project of revamping all political institutions. They wanted to transform the nation’s model of political and economic development from what they saw as a bourgeois democracy into a real democracy with equity and social justice. Correa claimed to be the leader of a “<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_De_La_Torre7/publication/262093836_El_tecnopopulismo_de_Rafael_Correa_Es_compatible_el_carisma_con_la_tecnocracia/links/579f4d3508ae6a2882f60e95.pdf">citizens’ revolution</a>” tasked with bringing Ecuador to its second and definitive independence from foreign domination and anti-national elites.</p>
<p>Like Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and other populists, Correa saw the people as a homogeneous entity with one interest and will embodied under his leadership. For example, after wining the 2009 election he <a href="http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/15335/populist-playbook-the-slow-death-of-democracy-in-correa-s-ecuador">asserted</a> that “Ecuador voted for itself.” Correa believed he was the only voice of the people. He <a href="http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/latin-america%E2%80%99s-authoritarian-drift-technocratic-populism-ecuador">branded</a> his rivals as enemies of the nation and his citizens’ revolution. Dissent even within his left-wing coalition was interpreted as treason, and Correa used discretion in enforcing laws to intimidate and repress independent social movements and his <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282389906_Surveil_and_Sanction_The_Return_of_the_State_and_Societal_Regulation_in_Ecuador">left-wing critics</a>. </p>
<p>But Correa’s state-centered model of development fell into <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2017/02/25/ecuador-se-despide-de-correa-y-ahora/">jeopardy</a>. The price of oil, which accounts for 58 percent of Ecuador’s exports, collapsed. Ecuador developed a bloated bureaucracy and began overspending without saving for times of economic scarcity. He faced massive demonstrations against his intention to indefinitely remain in power. In 2016, Correa <a href="http://www.larepublica.ec/blog/politica/2016/01/13/correa-ira-a-belgica-tras-dejar-el-poder-aunque-no-descarta-volver/">announced</a> he would temporarily step down from politics, named Moreno as his successor and promised to come back in 2021.</p>
<h2>The end of ‘correismo’?</h2>
<p>Lenin Moreno will inherit institutions designed for autocratic control of the public sphere and civil society. His party controls the congress, the judiciary, the electoral council and all institutions of <a href="http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/15335/populist-playbook-the-slow-death-of-democracy-in-correa-s-ecuador">accountability</a> like the comptroller and the ombudsman.</p>
<p>Correa <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510347.2015.1058784">took over</a> media outlets and formed a state media emporium. He <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282389906_Surveil_and_Sanction_The_Return_of_the_State_and_Societal_Regulation_in_Ecuador">regulated</a> and closed NGOs, and <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510347.2015.1058784">formed</a> loyal social movements. </p>
<p>But Moreno lacks Correa’s charisma. In my opinion, he will have difficulty controlling the different factions of Alianza País made up of left-wing activists, technocrats, businesspeople and traditional politicians. This is especially true since Correa might actually encourage clashes within the coalition to set himself up as the ultimate deal maker. He might try to dictate to Moreno how to govern. Yet, it is uncertain that Moreno would become his puppet, and quite likely he would have his own agenda and ambitions that could clash with his mentor’s.</p>
<p>Moreno may also face an opposition emboldened by the tight race and allegations of electoral fraud. Perhaps he’ll follow the example of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the handpicked successor to Hugo Chávez. In the absence of Chavez’s charisma, Maduro has turned to an autocratic approach to silence critics. He has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2017/04/03/cada-vez-hay-mas-presos-politicos-en-venezuela-el-grado-de-represion-se-ha-incrementado-a-un-nivel-brutal/?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Findex">jailed</a> members of the opposition and repressed protests. Venezuela is now in crisis.</p>
<p>Moreno will also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2017/03/27/la-mineria-amenaza-a-los-indigenas-shuar-en-ecuador/">confront</a> increasing resistance to natural resource extraction from indigenous people, increasing protests against corruption and his election.</p>
<p>The Ecuadorian elections show the perils of populist succession. In order to win, Correa and Moreno used the state and the media, and packed cronies in the electoral council. Even though Moreno won, he lacks legitimacy. Accusations of fraud will haunt his administration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carlos De la Torre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent elections in Latin America have suggested a retreat from left-wing politics and populist leaders. But results from Ecuador's 2017 presidential election suggest otherwise.Carlos De la Torre, Professor of Sociology, University of KentuckyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/738812017-03-12T10:18:48Z2017-03-12T10:18:48ZThe legacy of autocratic rule in Tanzania - from Nyerere to life under Magufuli<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159965/original/image-20170308-24182-1whteph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tanzania&#39;s President John Magufuli is praised by some for his &quot;no nonsense&quot; attitude.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Thomas Mukoya</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Arusha Declaration of <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199679966.001.0001/acprof-9780199679966-chapter-20">1967</a> is a defining document in Tanzania’s and Africa’s post colonial history. It began a process of nationalisation and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Tanzania/Economy">rural collectivisation</a> which was then replicated in other parts of the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533950008458699?journalCode=rsdy20">continent</a>.</p>
<p>As one of the few countries in East Africa not beset by internecine conflicts, Tanzania is often seen as a <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Rwanda-among-least-peaceful-countries-Tanzania-high/2558-1891216-view-printVersion-14piq48/index.html">beacon of hope</a>. But the country’s history hasn’t been entirely peaceful. </p>
<p>For example, the creation of the <a href="http://www.sadc.int/member-states/tanzania/">United Republic</a> in 1964 was the outcome of a <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201201120789.html">bloody revolution</a> in Zanzibar. And the forced resettlement of the rural population in the 1970s was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/101/405/509/52353/Almost-an-Oxfam-in-itself-Oxfam-Ujamaa-and">often brutal</a>. The supposedly backward south of the country was most affected by this <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40984999?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">social engineering</a>. </p>
<p>Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s first post-independence leader, might be rightly revered across Africa for the role his government played in various <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/tanzania-and-its-support-southern-african-liberation-movements">liberation struggles</a>. But his domestic agenda isn’t recalled with the same fondness, especially in the south.</p>
<p>Multiparty democracy came to Tanzania in <a href="http://www.gsdrc.org/document-library/multiparty-democracy-in-tanzania/">1995</a>. Yet the autocratic and paternalistic tendencies remain, as reflected in the extremely heavy-handed nature of the response to <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/national/Why-Mtwara--violence-is-beyond-gas-pipeline/1840392-1861170-u5mncc/index.html">unrest in Mtwara in 2013</a>.</p>
<p>This is also echoed by the actions and rhetoric of current President <a href="http://www.cnbcafrica.com/news/east-africa/2017/01/03/tanzanias-president-john-magufuli-the-bulldozer/">John “the bulldozer” Magufuli</a>. While some celebrate his “no nonsense” attitude when it comes to tackling corruption and excessive government spending, others express major concerns over his ban on opposition <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/Enough-politicking--JPM-tells-Opposition/-/1840340/3264682/-/15iu05dz/-/index.html">political rallies</a> until the 2020 general election. He’s also drawn ire for the failure of his government to implement court <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/Implement-our-rulings--rights-court-tells-TZ-govt/1840340-3833490-t71ylhz/index.html">rulings on human rights</a>.</p>
<p>And the country has witnessed major protests at the management of newly discovered <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22652809">reserves of natural gas</a> in the south.</p>
<p>As a result there’s a widespread view across southern Tanzania that for half a century the central government has pursued a deliberate process of mistreatment and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Making_of_a_Periphery.html?id=mcabzHC8N70C&amp;redir_esc=y">marginalisation</a>.</p>
<p>Rural collectivisation is a significant milestone in such claims, a process that was kick-started by the Arusha Declaration. The document’s 50th anniversary is a prescient moment to reflect on its impact and the legacy of autocratic rule in Tanzania. </p>
<h2>Tumultuous times</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2016.26">fieldwork</a> over many years in southern Tanzania has revealed widespread scepticism about the value of independence to the inhabitants. <em>Uhuru</em> – or independence – from Britain in 1961 is seen to be a less significant moment in the lives of many rural Tanzanians than the Arusha Declaration. </p>
<p>As a 90-year old farmer told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tanganyika became Tanzania and our flag changed, (Queen) Elizabeth left and (President) Nyerere arrived. The leaders knew about these changes but nothing changed for me… Change came after Nyerere’s speech in Arusha, he told us about ujamaa and we were forced to move from our villages.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many Tanzanians living in the southern parts of the country feel the same way. This isn’t surprising given that the declaration triggered rural collectivisation (villagisation) which brought about tangible changes to people’s lives. It also cemented the language of <a href="http://pdfproc.lib.msu.edu/?file=/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/political%20science/volume8n1/ajps008001004.pdf"><em>ujamaa</em></a> or “African Socialism”. </p>
<p>Villagisation was guided by the belief that communal farming could improve agricultural productivity and guarantee long-term food security and self-sufficiency. </p>
<p>At the outset Nyerere declared that migration to ujamaa villages would happen voluntarily. Forcing people to move wouldn’t be countenanced by the state.</p>
<p>But when only 15% of the total population chose to resettle between 1969 and 1973 the governing Tanganyika Africa National Union <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/2787373.pdf">decreed</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>to live in villages is an order. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nyerere’s increasing sense of urgency is reflected both in his famous phrase <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/78ABA581AA13EDCC6C964A4AF3AC75E1/S0022278X0300421Xa.pdf/we-must-run-while-others-walk-popular-participation-and-development-crisis-in-tanzania-1961-9.pdf">“we must run while others walk”</a> and in the decision to rapidly transform voluntary migration into mass resettlement. Many people that I interviewed recalled this as a brutal process. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>People were moved by force, the soldiers came, they came to worry the people, and they were taken, all of their things <a href="http://roar.uel.ac.uk/4950/">were destroyed or put in a truck</a>. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not all recollections of this process were universally negative. But first hand experiences of villagisation had a profound and lasting impact on many people. </p>
<p>These were tumultuous times in the country, also reflected in increased authoritarianism in Tanzania from the late 1960s onward. Renowned Ugandan academic <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/mamdani.html">Mahmood Mamdani</a> describes the events as <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5839.html">“decentralized despotism”</a> – a paternalistic urban elite making decisions for the “backward” rural poor. This, he argued, bore many of the hallmarks of colonial modes of rule within post colonial power structures. </p>
<p>There have been other critiques of the <em>ujamaa</em> villages project. It not only affected people on the ground but also precipitated a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-7679.1975.tb00439.x/pdf">national food crisis</a>.</p>
<p>One of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2016.26">my interviewees</a> blamed Nyerere directly for </p>
<blockquote>
<p>destroy[ing] our farms and houses to build something that he called the nation.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Why caution is required</h2>
<p>Magufuli’s sky high national <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201609160870.html">approval ratings</a> show no signs of abating. This adds further fuel to the <a href="http://africasacountry.com/2016/10/whatwouldnyereredo/">comparison</a> that is made with Julius “father of the nation” Nyerere.</p>
<p>The autocratic nature of Nyerere’s rule, informed by a clear <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/african-studies-review/article/div-classtitlecolonial-legacies-and-postcolonial-authoritarianism-in-tanzania-connects-and-disconnectsdiv/CAB95D655FDF2C003FE2A9CE128CDF28">sense of paternalism</a> towards the rural majority, mirrors the colonial model and is reflected in contemporary political leadership in Tanzania.</p>
<p>I believe that there’s merit in the argument that the forcible resettlement of the rural majority under Nyerere partially mirrored colonial modes of rule. The worrying thing is that further continuities are evident in the enactment of the Arusha Declaration and the authoritarianism of today.</p>
<p>This should be food for thought for those heaping praise on the new regime in Tanzania.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73881/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Ahearne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Multiparty democracy came to Tanzania in 1995 but the autocratic rule under the country's first post-independence leader
Julius Nyerere, seems to be echoed by current President John Magufuli.Rob Ahearne, Senior Lecturer in International Development, University of East LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/721392017-01-30T14:53:23Z2017-01-30T14:53:23ZBenoît Hamon wins French socialist nomination as party sees a reassuring bump in the polls<p>Benoît Hamon has been officially named as the Socialist Party’s candidate for the 2017 presidential election. His path to victory has appeared fairly secure for a while. He recently secured <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/22/benoit-hamon-tops-poll-in-first-french-socialist-primary-race">36% of the vote in the first round</a> before this latest vote, finishing ahead of his main rival, the former prime minister Manuel Valls on 32%. But the real clincher was the declaration by Arnaud Montebourg (17%) that <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/video/20170122-france-left-primary-arnaud-montebourg-concedes-defeat-calls-support-benoit-hamon">he would support Hamon</a> in the second round. In the end, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/764e56c6-e65e-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539">Hamon took 58.7% of the vote to Valls’ 41.3%</a>.</p>
<p>There was some speculation in the week running up to the vote that the right of the Socialist party would mobilise and that an increased turnout would work in Valls’s favour, but that never quite materialised. Despite throwing various claims at his rival, Valls could not claw back the deficit. The final televised debate between the two men passed off without major incident, even though Hamon appeared to be rowing back from some of his promises on his much-vaunted <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38723219">universal minimum wage</a>.</p>
<h2>Cranking up the machine</h2>
<p>For Hamon, the hard work begins now. It is one thing to win a primary but quite another to exert your authority over the party that elected you. In the week between the first and second rounds, a number of prominent figures on the social democratic right-wing of the party had been suggesting that if Hamon wins, they would rally to his centre-left rival Emmanuel Macron, who is standing as an independent candidate at the helm of his own political movement. The most prominent Hamon sceptic is former presidential candidate <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/elections/presidentielles/primaires-gauche/2017/01/25/35005-20170125ARTFIG00143-segolene-royal-fait-un-pas-de-plus-vers-emmanuel-macron.php">Ségolène Royal</a>.</p>
<p>Hamon does, however, have a whole party machine behind him – and you need one of those to run a campaign. It still remains to be seen whether either Macron’s En Marche! Movement is anything like as capable on the ground. The same goes for Hamon’s other main left-wing rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He too is running as an independent. The socialist machine might be rusty but it is at least tried and tested.</p>
<p>And in fact, thumping Valls in the run-off was not the only piece of good news for Hamon. Up until this point, it looked like the Socialist Party candidate – whoever they were – would be starting the main presidential race from an extremely weak position, in fifth place behind candidates from across the political spectrum, including the far right. But an opinion poll published by <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/elections/presidentielles/2017/01/29/35003-20170129ARTFIG00201-presidentielle-fillon-et-macron-au-coude-a-coude-le-pen-en-tete.php">Le Figaro</a> as the left-wing votes were being added up produced some surprising figures.</p>
<p>It places the Front National’s <a href="https://euobserver.com/beyond-brussels/136714">Marine Le Pen in the lead</a>, with 25% of votes, ahead of Fillon on 22% – not bad after the torrid week he has had with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/27/penelope-gate-casts-dark-shadow-over-fillons-presidential-prospects">Penelopegate</a>, in which he faces an investigation into alleged misuse of public funds. Then comes Macron on 21%. So far, so more-or-less what we expected. The real shock comes with Hamon now being credited with 15% of voting intentions (rather than the measly 6% being predicted for the Socialist candidate). That places him well ahead of Mélenchon, who is on 10% – far below his previous showing of around 14%.</p>
<p>This matters because Hamon is not very far, in many of his policies, from Mélenchon and might well gnaw away at his supporters. It also matters because Mélenchon has repeatedly insisted that whoever wins the Socialist Party contest should throw their lot in with him and the ecologist Yannick Jadot to create a “real” left-wing, red-green alliance. Hamon was unlikely ever to do that and, if the poll is right, he certainly doesn’t need to. Mélenchon, a man who could start a fight in an empty room, will be incandescent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72139/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Victory seems a distant prospect, but the latest polling suggests the ruling socialist party might not be quite out for the count.Paul Smith, Associate Professor in French and Francophone Studies, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/716472017-01-20T18:10:41Z2017-01-20T18:10:41ZThe left's response to Trump and alt-right must be international<p>With Donald Trump’s inauguration as American president, one more event considered by many to be beyond the realm of possibility has come to pass. Protests <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-inauguration-protests-20170119-story.html">may have been</a> taking place in America and around the world, but the crisis of the left is all too apparent. </p>
<p>The social democrats have long since accepted the right’s tenets of globalisation and deregulation. They offer a managerial capitalism where taxes from a marketised system are used to sustain and, where possible, expand the welfare state within national boundaries. This looks almost meaningless in the face of an ageing population, as Western economies compete for jobs and investment with resurgent Asia and struggle for growth. The more radical left has meanwhile found a foothold in some countries, but it has tended towards protest rather than offering a genuine alternative. </p>
<p>I believe these groups have to return to something central to their 19th-century <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/">founding principles</a> that has been overlooked. A global problem does not need the response of national movements but rather a fully coordinated international movement. The challenge for the left is to bring this about. </p>
<h2>Left in the cold</h2>
<p>The story of our times is the journey of socialism during the 20th century. It transformed from an explicitly international movement dedicated to radical alternatives to the status quo into political parties confined within national boundaries. These focused on raising and managing resources for public services and welfare within a global capitalist order forged on globalisation and technological change. </p>
<p>The abject <a href="http://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/201502/12081/1914-how-2nd-international-failed">failure</a> of a planned Europe-wide general strike on the eve of World War I was an early portent. By the 2008 financial crisis, the absence of any serious discussion, let alone an attempt, to mobilise a cross-national movement to combat austerity even within the eurozone was a severe indictment of European social democracy. Governments run by social democrat parties colluded in institutional processes that led to harsh austerity in <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/austerity-ireland-europe-open-your-eyes">Ireland</a>, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c65d21a2-703d-11e6-9ac1-1055824ca907">Portugal</a>, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/30/mariano-rajoy-re-elected-as-spains-prime-minister-as-thousands-o/">Spain</a> and <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/12/greece-anti-austerity-measures-incur-creditors-wrath-161215210859640.html">Greece</a>. </p>
<p>Movements like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain mobilised national anti-austerity coalitions but had little to say about coordinated action. In the US, Bernie Sanders’ take on democratic socialism <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-bernie-sanders-democratic-socialism-20160223-story.html">builds on</a> guaranteeing the economic rights of all Americans. Jeremy Corbyn and his leftist colleagues in the Labour Party also <a href="https://theconversation.com/facing-a-hostile-press-jeremy-corbyn-cant-win-but-he-could-at-least-try-63557">oppose</a> UK austerity and pay plenty of lip service to international solidarity, but they are not trying to bring it about. Movements such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/anarchy-in-the-usa-five-years-on-the-legacy-of-occupy-wall-street-and-what-it-can-teach-us-in-the-age-of-trump-68452">Occupy</a> did try to coordinate internationally, but focused on the symptoms of the problem and not the causes. Why this global failure?</p>
<h2>The target constituency</h2>
<p>The left’s big conundrum is how to persuade the key voting constituency of the alt.right that it has a better solution to their problems. Populists, including Trump, Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen, have primarily mobilised white voters on low to middle incomes working in skilled or semi-skilled jobs in industry and services or running small businesses – plus pensioners. Theresa May’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-shared-society-article-by-theresa-may">favoured term</a> for this group is people who are “just getting by”. </p>
<p>They have seen their incomes and future prospects stagnate; stable jobs in manufacturing replaced by lower-paying less stable ones in services; and their access to welfare become restricted – and even contested – following the financial crisis. </p>
<p>This has stoked their opposition to mass immigration, political correctness and reckless banks and corporations. They increasingly believe the welfare state shouldn’t give special treatment to minorities or the “undeserving poor”. They are patriotic both for cultural reasons and because they believe the nation state can protect them against the excesses of globalisation and technological change. </p>
<p>In other words, they agree with many of the key arguments of the left’s critique of global capitalism but believe in an isolationist solution. As Trump put it simply during his inauguration speech, “America first”. </p>
<p>The left has to convince them that the protection they believe they receive from the nation state is temporary. The huge problem facing Western democracies is that their populations <a href="http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/ageing/WPA2015_Report.pdf">are getting older</a> and therefore need more workers to sustain them – low birth rates dictate that these workforces have to come from other countries. Leaders like Trump may temporarily reduce immigration, but you can only defy gravity for so long. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, economic theory <a href="http://internationalecon.com/Trade/Tch60/T60-14.php">makes clear</a> that in a relatively free global market, there would be a tendency for people with similar skills to get paid the same. An often-cited example <a href="http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/120457/2/jaae453.pdf">is that</a> following the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), unskilled labour wages gradually fell in the US while rising in Mexico. In an era of globalisation and technological change, until workers with similar skills in the East and South receive wages on a par with those in the West, those people “just getting by” can expect their standard of living to keep falling. </p>
<p>One of the main consequences of globalisation is that it has created a world market in which workers in different countries see themselves as competing for wages, jobs and investment. This has exacerbated divisions that help to explain why coordinated international action is never even mentioned as a possibility – never mind that smartphones and the internet could make it much easier than for previous generations.</p>
<h2>Common interests</h2>
<p>The answer is for people to stop competing with workers in other countries and start recognising their common interest in winning a greater share of global wealth. This means everything from coordinated wage bargaining positions within multinationals and global supply chains to eurozone-wide general strikes against austerity. It means that retail workers on zero-hours contracts selling clothes made by Bangladeshi sweatshop workers need to recognise their common interests and mobilise to act together. </p>
<p>Political entrepreneurs such as Trump have blurred the traditional differences between left-wing and right-wing concerns by offering a bulwark to the effects of change in an increasingly complex world. They have singled out migrants and minorities as the physical embodiment of the problem. The left’s big failure is not to explain or even perhaps understand why this is the wrong answer. There is no reason why it could not make Trump’s inauguration a line in the sand.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71647/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sayantan Ghosal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The people who voted for the new American president may not be as hard for the Left to reach as it may appear.Sayantan Ghosal, Professor of Economics, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.